^i  of  ww*^ 

APR  17  1974 


APR  17   1974 


THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST:, 


OK, 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    RELIGION, 

AND  THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  ITS  RISE 

AND  DECLINE. 


V 
FELIX  L.  OSWALD. 


"  If  the  right  theory  should  ever  be  proclaimed,  we  shall  know 
it  by  this  token :  that  it  will  solve  many  riddles."— J?.  W.  Emerson. 


NEW  YORK : 

THE  TRUTH  SEEKER  COMPANY, 

28  Lafayette  Place. 


Copyrighted,  1883. 

BY 

Felix  L.  Oswald. 


THE  MEMORY  OP 

JORDANUS     BRUNO, 

THE  HEROIC  APOSTLE  OP 

NATURE,  FREEDOM,  AND  TRUE  RELIGION, 

THIS  WORK  IS  REVERENTLY  DEDICATED 
BY  THE  AUTHOR. 


PREFACE. 


The  right  of  free  inquiry  is  the  first  condition 
of  progress,  and  dogmatists  who  dispute  that  right 
virtually  impeach  the  evidence  or  the  morality  of 
their  own  dogmas.  An  exception  from  that  rule 
may,  under  certain  conditions,  be  admitted  in 
favor  of  theological  tenets.  Unobtrusive  mystics 
have  a  right  to  expound  the  unknowable  after 
their  own  fashion.  The  priests  of  Isis  and  the 
adepts  of  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries  had  the  priv- 
ilege to  veil  the  secrets  of  their  sacred  rites. 
The  discreet  Pythagoreans  could  not  be  obliged  to 
explain  the  bean-law  of  their  master  or  their  rea- 
son for  believing  in  his  ghost-stories  as  firmly  as 
in  the  evidence  of  his  geometrical  theorems. 
Even  nocturnal  devil-worshippers  may  be  per- 
mitted to  mumble  about  their  altars,  if  they  do 
not  dress  them  at  the  expense  of  their  neighbors. 

But  it  alters  the  case,  if  such  creeds  become 
aggressive.  The  right  of  secrecy  does  not  pertain 
to  religions  that  have  devastated  our  earth  by  a 
series  of  murderous  wars,  that  have  enforced  their 


THE   SEC11ET   OF   THE   EAST. 

anti-natural  dogmas  by  destroying  the  prosperity 
of  whole  nations,  and  their  ghost-dogmas  by  the 
torture  and  slaughter  of  millions  ;  religions  which, 
after  the  loss  of  their  political  power,  have  used 
all  their  moral  influence  to  obstruct  the  progress 
of  freedom  and  science,  to  arrogate  the  education 
of  our  children,  and  to  interfere  with  the  recrea- 
tions of  our  holidays,— all  under  the  pretext  of 
promoting  the  propaganda  of  an  infallible  revela- 
tion. The  votaries  of  such  creeds  cannot  plead 
the  privileges  of  the  ancient  mystics,  for  the  right 
to  investigate  their  claims  has  become  a  social  and 
religious  duty.  Those  who  recognize  that  duty 
will  approve  the  purpose  of  the  present  work. 

Felix  L.  Oswald. 
Cincinnati,  September,  1883. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION, 


9 


I.  The  Genesis  of  Pessimism, 15 

II.  Buddha  and  his  Galilean  Sdooessob,  ...  23 

m.  The  Ethics  of  the  Christian  Religion,    .   .  33 

IV.  The  Convebsion  of  Eubope, 52 

V.  The  Night  of  the  Middle  Ages, 65 

VI.  An  Expensive  Creed, 78 

VII.  Daybreak, .  93 

VIII.  The  Protestant  Revolt,      104 

IX.  Regenesis, .  115 

Appendix. .122 


THE  SEOEET  OF  THE  EAST; 

OH. 

The  Origin  op  the  Christian  Religion  and  the 
Significance  op  its  Rise  and  Decline. 


INTRODUCTION. 

"Who  has  unlocked  the  gate3  of  the  morning  T'—Sadi. 

The  wisest  man  of  all  nations  and  times  warns 
the  seeker  after  truth  against  the  influence  of  what 
he  calls  the  "idols  (or  illusions)  of  the  tribe";* 
that  is,  the  traditional  prejudices  of  his  nation, 
family,  or  sect,  or,  in  other  words,  against  the  bias 
of  confounding  hearsays  with  the  results  of  our 
own  investigations.  To  him  who  could  divest 
himself  of  that  bias,  the  history  of  civilization 
during  the  last  twenty  centuries  would  present 
itself  in  the  succession  of  the  following  prominent 
phenomena :  — 

I. 

The  development  of  a  great  cosmopolitan  em- 
pire. The  military  rigor  of  a  belligerent  common- 
wealth, gradually  relaxing  under  the  influence  of 
prosperity  and  international  commerce.  Political 
absolutism,  co-existent  with  an  almost  unlimited 
personal,  social,  and  intellectual  freedom.  A  flour- 
ishing state  of  husbandry.  Industrial  progress  in 
*  Novum  Organon,  lib.  i.,  cap.  3. 


JO  THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

the  direction  of  architectural  and  agricultural  im- 
provements. An  optimistic  religion,  founded  on 
a  symbolic  nature-worship,  and  supplemented,  or 
partly  supplanted,  by  three  rival  systems  of  nat- 
uralistic philosophy.  Universal  tolerance  of  all 
tolerant  religions.  An  excellent  system  of  phys- 
ical education.  Flourishing  schools  of  philosophy, 
natural  science,  jurisprudence,  rhetoric,  and  medi- 
cine. Liberal  patronage  of  the  fine  arts.  Un- 
paralleled material  prosperity,  flourishing  cities, 
active  commerce,  excellent  roads.  Love  of  health 
and  recognition  of  its  social  importance,  free 
aqueducts,  free  baths  and  gymnasia.  The  opti- 
mism of  the  popular  religion  manifested  in  the 
general  worship  of  joy,  cheerful  festivals,  inspiring 
athletic  games  and  field  sports,  though  in  the 
larger  cities  the  want  of  better  diversions  leading 
to  the  brutal  excesses  of  the  gladiatorial  combats. 
^Esthetic  culture  evinced  in  the  love  of  scenic  and 
artistic  beauty,  poetry  and  music. 

Summary:  Nature- worship,  agriculture,  indus- 
trial and  scientific  progress,  commercial  activity. 
Wealth,  luxury,  and  their  concomitant  vices,  offset 
by  a  naturalistic  philosophy,  and  the  love  of  ath- 
letic sports,  physical  education  and  health-promot- 
ing institutions.  Intellectual  and  aesthetic  culture, 
tolerance,  material  prosperity,  and  the  successful 
pursuit  of  earthly  happiness. 

II. 

A  general  eclipse  of  common  sense  and  science. 
A  wide-spread  epidemic  of  anti-naturalism,  mira- 
cle-worship, and  self-torture.      Rapid   decline  of 


INTRODUCTION.  11 

industry.  The  neglect  of  rational  agriculture 
turning  thousands  of  fertile  fields  into .  deserts. 
Systematic  suppression  of  political,  personal,  and 
intellectual  liberty.  Religious  terrorism,  culminat- 
ing in  man  hunts  and  wholesale  massacres.  Gen- 
eral ignorance,  brutal  abasement  of  the  lower 
classes.  Squalid  misery  of  domestic  life,  general 
indifference  to  the  beauties  of  nature  and  the  bless- 
ings of  health.  A  thousand  years'  interregnum 
of  science,  Faith  usurping  the  throne  of  Reason, 
every  branch  of  human  knowledge  withered  by 
the  poison  of  supernaturalism,  literary  activity 
limited  to  the  production  of  homilies  and  miracle- 
legends,  education  devoted  to  the  suppression  of 
all  natural  instincts  and  the  substitution  of  sub- 
missive belief  for  the  love  of  truth  and  free  in- 
quiry. Decadence  of  the  fine  arts,  natural  science 
merged  in  a  deluge  of  superstition. 

Summary :  Darkness,  misery,  and  slavery. 

III. 

The  dawn  of  a  new  day.  Reason  awakening 
from  her  long  slumber.  A  spirit  of  free  inquiry 
arraigning  its  votaries  against  the  authority  of 
tradition.  Gradual  emancipation  of  common 
sense.  The  success  of  a  dogmatic  insurrection 
followed  by  an  unprecedented  revival  of  intellect- 
ual activity,  superstitions  and  abuses  succumbing 
to  the  successive  triumphs  of  science.  Social  re- 
construction, the  recognition  of  human  rights,  a 
general  reform  of  juristic,  administrative,  and  mu- 
nicipal institutions,  education  redeemed  from  the 
tyranny  of  anti-naturalism.     Development  of  new 


12 


THE    SECRET    OF    THE    EAST. 


sciences,  new  arts,  and  new  branches  of  literature. 
The  increase  of  general  prosperity  furthered  by 
the  progress  of  natural  science,  industry,  and 
rational  agriculture,  but  retarded  by  the  influence 
of  mediaeval  reactions  and  lingering  prejudices. 
Material  advantages  counteracted  by  hereditary 
vices,  the  purpose  of  free  institutions  partly  de- 
feated by  traditional  superstitions  and  hereditary 
moral  cowardice. 

Summary:  Traditional  prejudices  obstructing 
the  propaganda  of  a  rationalistic  reform,  the  after- 
effects of  moral  and  physical  poisons  resisting  the 
healing  agencies  of  Nature.  But,  on  the  whole, 
progress  in  the  direction  of  light,  freedom,  and 
happiness. 

The  most  important  problem  in  the  history  of 
civilization  is  now  the  question :  Whence  this  great 
sunburst  of  knowledge?  What  magic  has  broken 
the  spell  of  the  dreadful  night?  How  has  the 
sunshine  of  our  life  been  restored  ?  Is  it  the  dawn 
of  a  new  day,  or  the  end  of  an  unnatural  eclipse  ? 
The  most  frequent  answer  to  these  inquiries  is 
the  theory  which  ascribes  the  blessings  of  modern 
civilization  to  the  influence  of  the  system  of 
dogmas  and  traditions  known  as  the  Christian  Re- 
ligion. The  doctrine  of  the  New  Testament,  we  are 
told,  is  the  leaven  of  the  moral  universe,  the  re- 
forming agency  that  has  redeemed  the  world  from 
vice  and  barbarism.  Only  Christian  nations  have 
entered  the  path  of  progress.  Virtue,  humanity, 
and  true  peace  can  prosper  only  in  the  shadow 
of  the  cross.  In  the  night  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  Bible  was   our  beacon;    and,  as   the  cloud- 


INTRODUCTION.  13 

pillar  of  a  heavenly  guide,  it  will  lead  our  further 
progress. 

But,  in  examining  the  claims  of  these  theorists, 
the  impartial  inquirer  cannot  overlook  the  follow- 
ing objections:  1.  That  the  rise  of  the  Christian 
faith  coincides  with  the  sunset  of  the  great  South- 
European  civilization;  2.  That  the  zenith  of  its 
power  coincides  with  the  midnight  of  mediaeval 
barbarism;  3.  That  the  decline  of  its  influence 
coincides  with  the  sunrise  of  a  North-European 
civilization;  4.  That  all  the  principal  victories  of 
Freedom  and  Science  have  been  achieved  in  spite 
of  the  Church,  in  spite  of  her  utmost  efforts  to 
thwart  or  diminish  their  triumph,  that  only  in 
consequence  of  the  futility  of  these  efforts  the 
heresies  of  one  age  have  become  the  truisms  of  the 
next,  so  that  Christianity  has  always  marched  in 
the  rear  of  civilization ;  5.  That  the  exponents  of 
the  Christian  dogmas  persist  in  their  hostility  to 
the  progress  of  a  reform  which  they  recognize  only 
by  condescending  to  share  the  fruits  of  its  former 
victories;  6.  That  the  worst  enemies  of  political 
and  intellectual  liberty  were  firm  believers  in  the 
dogmas  of  the  New  Testament,  while  the  direct  or 
indirect  repudiation  of  those  dogmas  has  been  the 
fundamental  tenet  of  nearly  every  great  thinker, 
scholar,  or  statesman,  till  the  degree  of  Protestant- 
ism has  become  the  chief  test  of  intellectual  sanity ; 
7.  That,  among  the  contemporary  nations  of  the 
Christian  world,  the  most  sceptical  are  the  most 
civilized,  while  the  most  orthodox  are  the  most 
backward  in  freedom,  industry,  and  general  intelli- 
gence. 


14         THE  SECRET  OP  THE  EAST. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  creed  of  the 
Middle  Ages  was  a  pernicious  superstition,  how 
could  its  exponents  succeed  in  fastening  their  yoke 
upon  so  many  noble  and  manly  nations?  How 
were  they  able  to  suppress  the  healthier  instincts 
of  the  human  race,  and  perpetuate  their  power  for 
nearly  sixteen  centuries  ?  By  what  baneful  magic 
could  the  worst  enemies  of  human  happiness  main- 
tain themselves  upon  the  throne  of  religion  and 
morality  ? 

The  solution  of  the  enigma  has  long  been  a  half- 
open  secret,  and,  but  for  the  clouds  in  the  east, 
should  long  have  ceased  to  be  a  secret  at  all.  One 
by  one,  the  covering  veils  have  since  been  lifted, 
till  even  the  blind  could  have  recognized  the  pal- 
pable facts ;  but  though  palpable,  and  often  glar- 
ingly visible,  they  have  never  yet  become  audible. 
Their  discoverers  have  been  silenced  with  fire  and 
poison,  with  threats  and  bribes.  Their  promulga- 
tion has  been  deprecated  in  the  name  of  piety,  in 
the  name  of  prudence,  in  the  name  of  social  wel- 
fare, in  the  name  of  morality ;  nay,  in  the  name  of 
heaven  and  in  the  name  of  heaven's  God.  In  the 
course  of  the  last  eighteen  hundred  years,  that  God 
has  been  appealed  to  under  many  strange  pre- 
texts. Let  us  for  once  invoke  his  aid  in  the  name 
of  Truth. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  GENESIS  OF  PESSIMISM. 

"Woe  to  the  Sphinx,  if  we  can  solve  her  riddle."— J.  P. 
Richter. 

About  twenty-four  hundred  years  ago,  a  relig- 
ious Hindu  retired  to  the  hills  of  Barabar,  near 
Gaya,  to  meditate  upon  the  problem  of  life  and 
the  origin  of  evil.  The  Ceylon  Buddhists  date 
the  advent  of  their  religion  from  534  B.C.,  but 
geographical  traditions  are  generally  more  reliable 
than  chronological  records ;  and  between  Behar  and 
Patna,  on  the  Upper  Ganges,  the  traveller  of  the 
future  may  linger  in  the  valley  of  the  Bar  Mo- 
hanan  to  visit  the  fountain  of  the  great  Marah,  the 
well  of  bitterness  that  has  poisoned  the  life- 
springs  of  so  many  hundred  nations,  and  still 
mixes  its  gall  with  the  sources  of  our  moral 
food. 

Near  Buddha-Gaya,  in  the  solitude  of  the  Bara- 
bar hill-forests,  the  mind  of  the  brooding  Hindu 
evolved  a  system  which  has  the  theoretical  advan- 
tage of  consistency.  Ho  proposed  to  solve  the 
problem  of  existence  on  the  nihilistic  plan,  and 
avoid  the  disappointments  of  life  by  renouncing 
its  hopes.  The  hope  of  earthly  happiness,  accord- 
ing to  the  theory  of  Buddha  Sakyamuni,  is  a 
chimera,  a  phantom  that  lures  us  from  error  to 
error  through  endless  toils,  and  robs  even  the 
grave  of  its  peace ;  for  he  who  dies  uncured  of  his 


16         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

delusion  must  return  to  earth,  and  continue  the 
hopeless  chase  in  another  life.  Quietism — i.e.,  an- 
nihilation of  desire — is  the  only  hope  of  emancipa- 
tion ;  and  that  goal  of  peace  can  be  reached  only 
by  total  abstinence  from  earthly  pleasures.  All 
worldly  blessings  are  curses  in  disguise,  and  he 
alone  who  has  lifted  the  veil  of  that  disguise  has 
entered  the  path  of  salvation.  To  him,  self-denial 
becomes  the  highest  wisdom,  and  self-abhorrence 
the  supreme  virtue.  He  must  court  sorrow  and 
disappointment  as  others  woo  the  smiles  of  fort- 
une, he  must  avoid  everything  that  could  recon- 
cile him  to  life  and  lure  him  back  to  the  delusions 
of  worldly  pursuits.  Life  is  a  disease,  and  death 
the  only  cure.  The  highest  goal  of  the  future  is 
Nirvana,  peace  and  absolute  deliverance  from  the 
vexations  of  earthly  desires.  All  human  knowl- 
edge is  vain,  the  great  object  of  life  being  the 
suppression  of  our  natural  instincts.  Self-afflic- 
tion is  the  only  rational  pursuit.  The  love  of 
wealth  is  folly:  the  slaves  of  covetousness  forge 
fetters  for  their  own  feet.  True  believers  should 
seek  temporal  peace  by  curtailing  their  wants  and 
cultivating  the  virtue  of  indifference  to  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  fortune.  He  who  strives  after  higher 
merit  must  renounce  all  earthly  possessions,  live 
on  alms,  dress  in  rags,  shave  his  head,  and  abstain 
from  marriage,  merry-makings,  and  the  use  of 
animal  food.  He  must  have  no  fixed  habitation, 
and  must  even  avoid  to  sleep  twice  under  the  same 
tree,  lest  an  undue  affection  for  any  earthly  object 
should  hinder  his  spirit  in  the  progress  of  its 
emancipation  from  the  vanities  of  life  | 


THE  GENESIS   OF    PESSIMISM.  17 

According  to  the  Indian  tradition,  Mahar,  the 
prince  of  the  earth-spirits,  exhausted  all  his  re- 
sources to  prevent  the  promulgation  of  the  new 
dogma.  But,  unfortunately  for  the  happiness  of 
the  human  race,  the  efforts  of  Mahar  proved  una- 
vailing. Buddha  Sakyamuni  preached  his  gospel 
with  the  zeal  of  a  divine  messenger.  His  apostles 
infested  all  Northern  and  Eastern  Hindostan.  Fifty 
years  after  his  death,  the  doctrine  of  anti-natural- 
ism had  superseded  the  native  religions  of  Cash- 
mere, Cabul,  Candahar,  Bactria,  and  Burmah; 
and,  five  hundred  years  later,  a  modified  form  of 
the  Buddha  gospel  was  preached  on  the  shores  of 
the  Mediterranean,  and  the  mania  of  pessimism 
spread  westward  and  northward  with  all  the  symp- 
toms attending  the  dissemination  of  an  unnatural 
vice.  Vices  are  perverted  instincts,  and  by  fasten- 
ing upon  the  basis  of  a  natural  propensity  usurp 
its  functions  and  its  resources.  Hence  their  per- 
sistency. The  propaganda  of  Buddhism  owed  its 
first  success  to  the  enthusiasm  of  its  apostle ;  but 
what  is  the  secret  of  its  further  progress  ?  What 
innate  bias  of  the  human  mind  has  furnished  the 
basis  of  its  development, — in  the  cultus  of  the 
eastern  nations,  as  well  as  in  the  mind  of  its 
founder  ? 

Gnosticism,  Essenism,  Sufism,  and  the  doctrines 
of  the  New  Testament,  with  all  the  various  subdi- 
visions of  its  votaries,  are  so  many  excrescences  of 
the  Buddhistic  parent-tree ;  and  an  exegetical  refer- 
ence to  their  complex  mysticism  would  be  an  ex- 
planation per  obscurius.  But  like  other  dogmas, 
and  nearly  all  the  myths  of  the  Aryan  races,  Buddh- 


18         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

ism  has  a  germ  in  the  great  pantheon  of  Brah- 
manism.  In  the  Sanskara,  or  book  of  sacraments, 
the  Jaw  of  Menu  lays  down  a  special  code  of  relig- 
ious ordinances  for  every  period  of  life,  and 
assigns  to  extreme  old  age  the  duty  of  certain 
ascetic  practices,  which  were  supposed  to  harmon- 
ize with  the  natural  quietism  attending  the  subsid- 
ence of  the  passions  and  vital  energies. 

"When  a  man  perceives  his  body  nagging,"  says 
the  Sanskara,  "when  he  sees  his  hair  becoming 
gray,  when  he  has  seen  the  son  of  his  son,  let  him 
leave  his  home  and  retire  into  the  solitude  of  the 
forest.  He  is  to  live  on  herbs,  roots,  and  fruits, 
not  to  cut  his  hair  or  nails,  and  busy  himself  only 
with  the  Vedas  and  the  contemplation  of  Brahm, 
in  order  to  approach  perfection  in  piety  and  sci- 
ence"; i.e.,  he  is  to  renounce  worldly  occupa- 
tions and  retire  to  the  solitude  of  the  woods,  as 
Felix  Sylla  retired  to  his  Apulian  farm-house,  and 
way-worn  Firdusi  to  the  hermitage  of  Thuss. 
"Peace  returns,"  says  Dr.  Zimmermann,  "at  an 
age  when  solitude  is  enough  to  make  a  hermitage 
pleasant."  Under  the  influence  of  sorrow  and  in- 
firmity, old  men  become  instinctive  pessimists. 
Nature  practises  her  delusions  for  wise  purposes 
of  her  own.  She  baits  her  matrimonial  traps  with 
visions  of  Elysium,  and  reconciles  her  children  to 
the  gathering  shadows  of  the  long  night  by  exag- 
gerating the  disappointments  of  the  day  and  the 
recollection  of  its  fatigues.  And,  even  at  the  end 
of  a  pleasant  evening,  rest  becomes  sweet  enough 
to  be  desired  for  its  own  sake. 

But  this  quietude  of  the  sunset  hour  Buddha 


THE   GENESIS   OF   PESSIMISM.  19 

Sakyamuni  attempts  to  enforce  in  the  morning  of 
life,  his  disciples  are  to  seek  refuge  in  sleep  before 
their  day's  work  is  done,  he  gathers  dry  leaves 
to  bury  the  budding  flower.  Like  the  genius  of 
death,  he  depreciates  life  by  dwelling  upon  the 
vanity  of  its  hopes ;  and  the  secret  of  his  success 
is  to  be  found  in  the  circumstance  that  in  every 
human  breast  there  is  a  germ  of  this  feeling  which 
may  be  stimulated  into  premature  activity.  Pes- 
simism is  precocious  senility.  It  is  a  reversion  of 
the  vital  instincts.  Even  in  the  prime  of  life,  the 
systematic  suppression  of  all  our  natural  desires 
will  lead  to  that  weariness  of  earth  which  nature 
had  intended  to  deaden  the  sorrow  of  the  parting 
hour,  as  we  may  force  a  plant  to  return  as  dust  to 
dust  by  depriving  it  of  its  flowers  and  green  leaves. 
Young  pessimists  resemble  the  fruits  that  rot 
before  they  ripen.  Monastic  tendencies  imply  an 
abnormal  condition  of  the  human  mind.  Only  a 
defeated  warrior,  a  man  without  hope  and  without 
courage,  can  find  solace  in  contemplating  the  ap- 
proach of  a  premature  night. 

Buddhism  and  its  daughter-creed  can  flourish 
only  in  a  sickly  soil.  Christianity  developed  its 
first  germs  in  the  carcass  of  the  decaying  Roman 
Empire,  and  still  retains  its  firmest  hold  upon  the 
degenerate  nations  of  Southern  Europe ;  while  the 
manlier  races  of  the  North  resisted  its  propaganda 
to  the  last,  and  were  the  first  to  free  themselves 
from  its  despotism, — just  as  Buddhism  has  been 
expelled  from  the  homes  of  the  Aryan  races  and 
relegated  to  the  moral  pest-house  of  the  South 
Mongol  empires,  for  in  Japan  its  influence  is  con- 


20         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

fined  to  the  observance  of  a  few  traditional  cere- 
monies. Disease,  crushing  misfortune,  mental  de- 
rangement, whatever  disqualifies  a  man  for  the 
healthy  business  of  life,  qualifies  him  for  the 
reception  of  anti-natural  dogmas.  Marasmus  and 
pessimism  are  as  concomitant  as  optimism  and 
health.  Crippled  foxes  decry  the  vintage.  Caged 
murderers,  like  gouty  libertines,  generally  become 
devout.  Nearly  every  scaffold  orator  edifies  his 
audience  by  the  enunciation  of  orthodox  senti- 
ments. Superannuated  coquettes  revenge  them- 
selves by  denouncing  the  illusions  of  a  world  that 
neglects  them.  Unmasked  hypocrites  console 
themselves  with  the  hope  of  a  better  hereafter. 
When  the  gods  of  war  rejected  his  appeal,  Charles 
IV.  of  Spain  solaced  his  spirit  by  embroider- 
ing a  petticoat  for  the  Holy  Virgin.  The  apos- 
tles of  pessimism  were  mostly  men  who  had 
reason  to  revenge  themselves  upon  nature.  Ranee*, 
the  founder  of  the  New  Trappists,  became  devout 
in  consequence  of  a  domestic  tragedy,  Ignatius 
Loyola  after  the  siege  of  Pampeluna  where  he 
was  crippled  and  disfigured,  Raimund  Lullius' 
quietism  dated  from  the  infidelity  of  his  bride, 
and  Count  Stolberg's  from  the  death  of  his  wife. 
Swift,  Schopenhauer,  and  Hannah  More  were 
martyrs  to  chronic  headache,  Dante  was  an  exile, 
and  Calvin  a  dyspeptic. 

Tradition  says  that  Buddha  Sakyamuni  entered 
upon  his  mission  only  after  he  had  exhausted  the 
pleasures  of  wealth  and  luxury.  The  debilitating 
effects  of  superannuation  may  thus  be  anticipated ; 
and,  if  the  vital  energies  have  been  spent  to  the 


THE   GENESIS   OP   PESSIMISM.  21 

dregs,  night  and  rest  become  the  summum  bonum. 
Lethe  is  a  refuge  from  the  weariness  of  surfeit 
as  well  as  from  the  infirmities  of  old  age;  and, 
under  the  influence  of  that  weariness,  Sakyamuni 
perhaps  recognized  its  remedy,  and  mistook  it  for  a 
panacea. 

"He  interdicts  the  sweetmeats  that  have  become 
indigestible  to  his  stomach,"  as  Voss  explained  the 
pessimism  of  his  friend  Stolberg.  The  gratifica- 
tion of  our  natural  instincts  is,  indeed,  a  sin  against 
the  cardinal  tenet  of  a  creed  which  identifies 
nature  with  the  origin  of  evil.  Hence,  that  worship 
of  sorrow,  which  is  the  distinctive  dogma  of  the  two 
anti-natural  religions,  and  which  has  so  perverted 
their  ethics  that  they  refuse  to  recognize  the  merit 
of  any  virtue  which  they  cannot  exaggerate  or  mis- 
construe into  a  duty  of  self -affliction. 

Pessimism  is  essentially  the  creed  of  decrepi- 
tude. Moribund  impotence  pleases  itself  in  the 
idea  that  her  lot  is  preferable  to  that  of  the  sur- 
vivors, and  from  that  idea  there  is  but  a  step  to 
the  blasphemous  thought  that  life  itself  is  a  delu- 
sion, and  earth  a  "vale  of  tears,"  a  land  of  sorrow 
and  disappointments.  A  eupeptic  boy  with  a  sincere 
predilection  for  such  dogmas  would  be  a  monster 
per  defectum,  a  being  devoid  of  the  instincts  of 
content  and  gratitude.  Hence,  we  find  that,  in 
spite  of  all  street  missions,  the  name  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  is  a  misnomer,  its 
conventicles  being  attended  chiefly  by  old  women 
of  both  sexes.  Hence,  also  the  frequency  of  "sick- 
bed conversions," — 

"The  Devil  was  sick,  the  Devil  a  monk  would  be." 


22         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

The  evils  caused  by  our  sins  against  the  health 
laws  of  nature  our  ignorance,  indolence,  and  arro- 
gance prefer  to  ascribe  to  an  inherent  defect  of  her 
constitution.  We  find  it  easier  to  pine  for  the  gar- 
dens of  the  New  Jerusalem  than  to  replant  the 
trees  of  our  wasted  earthly  paradise. 

Pessimism  and  anti-naturalism  are  inseparable 
correlatives.  Buddha  saw  that  the  healthiest  and 
noblest  instincts  of  the  human  mind  were  opposed 
to  his  system,  and  met  the  difficulty  by  the  total 
depravity  dogma.  In  order  to  justify  the  conclu- 
sions of  his  diseased  imagination,  he  had  to  deny 
the  competence  of  mental  health,  and  did  not  hes- 
itate to  denounce  our  natural  instincts  as  the 
sources  of  original  sin.  A  declaration  of  war  against 
nature  was  the  logical  outcome  of  his  system. 

Every  religion  reflects  the  moral  character  of  its 
birthplace :  Odin-worship,  the  martial  barbarism 
of  the  old  Northland ;  Judaism,  the  loyal  faith  and 
the  stern  morality  of  the  Hebrew  shepherds; 
Islam,  the  chivalrous  enthusiasm  of  the  free  Arab ; 
Stoicism  and  Epicurism  (which  had  supplanted  the 
ethical  functions  of  an  obsolete  mythological  sys- 
tem), the  manliness  and  the  optimistic  common 
sense  of  the  ancient  Greeks.  Of  all  the  countries 
of  the  earth,  ancient  India  was  the  most  cursed 
with  the  evils  of  despotism,  with  abject  and  hope- 
less social  degradation,  with  fantastic  superstitions, 
combined  with  a  neglect  of  all  the  sciences  that 
could  have  enabled  an  inquirer  to  ascertain  the 
true  cause  of  human  sufferings  and  their  proper 
remedies.  India,  the  seed-plot  of  the  most  con- 
tagious diseases  and  the  home  of  the  opium-habit, 
was  the  birthland  of  Pessimism. 


CHAPTER  IT. 

BUDDHA   AND   HIS   GALILEAN   SUCCESSOR. 
"Ex  0  iente  Lux." 

In  the  morning  hour  of  reawakening  reason, 
when  men  tried  to  explain  religious  traditions 
without  questioning  the  infallibility  of  their  truth, 
it  must  have  sorely  puzzled  many  an  honest  in- 
quirer to  reconcile  certain  dogmas  of  the  Church 
with  the  daily  evidence  of  his  senses;  for  in- 
stance, the  innate  purity  and  candor  of  young 
children  with  the  doctrine  of  natural  depravity,  or 
the  mental  and  moral  degeneration  of  the  most 
orthodox  communities  with  the  dogma  of  regener- 
ation by  faith. 

But,  wherever  indoctrination  had  not  yet  utterly 
deadened  the  instinct  of  truth,  the  most  perplex- 
ing of  all  tenets  must  have  been  the  theory  which 
considers  the  two  books  of  the  Christian  Bible  as 
consistent  and  mutually  confirmatory  parts  of  a 
harmonious  revelation.  Unreasoning  faith  may 
have  repeated  the  conventional  formulas  of  that 
dogma,  but  only  wilful  blindness  could  ever  defend 
it  upon  the  internal  evidence  of  the  facts.  Jean 
Bodin,  a  French  mystic  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
wrote  a  book  in  which  he  bemoans  the  growing 
scepticism  of  the  age,  and,  after  demonstrating  the 
reality  of  witchcraft  by  a  long  list  of  prodigies 
and  ghost-stories,  gives  his  reasons  for  enforcing 


24         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

the  penal  code  against  heretics,  with  full  instruc- 
tions for  their  discovery  and  torture.  If  that  book 
had  been  published  as  an  appendix  to  the  philo- 
sophical works  of  Lucius  Seneca,  and  under  the 
name  of  the  great  pagan  moralist,  the  absurdity  of 
the  mistake  could  not  have  been  more  glaring  than 
that  of  the  orthodox  Bible  theory. 

As  a  continuation — a  second  part,  as  it  were 

of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  the   New  Testament 
would  be  utterly  inexplicable.    Perhaps  no  other 
two  books  ever  published  are  more  dissimilar  in 
their  tendencies.     Here,  the  chronicle  of  a  brave 
and  simple-minded  nation  of  shepherds  and  hus- 
bandmen and  the  code  of  their  manful  law-giver, 
an  honest  system  of  morals,  rustic  and  somewhat 
austere,  but  with  a  realistic  basis  and  a  practical 
purpose;    there,    a  compilation  of    contradictory 
miracle-legends  and  anti-natural  dogmas.    Here,  an 
honest  silence  on  the  unknowable  mysteries  of  a 
future  existence,  a  consistent  avoidance  of  the  im- 
mortality tenet ;  there,  a  constant  petitio  principii  of 
that  dogma :  here,  a  stern  inculcation ;  there,  a  con- 
stant violation  of  the  first  commandment:   here, 
health-laws,  Samson  traditions,  and  pastoral  po- 
etry; there,  indifference  to  health,  to  manly  strength, 
and  the  gifts  of  our  mother  earth.    Here,  nature, 
agnostic  candor,  optimism  and  realism ;  there,  su- 
pernatural  and   anti-natural   dogmas,    mysticism, 
sophistry,  and  gnostic  phantoms.    The  ethical  char- 
acteristics of  the  two  books  would  be  a  sufficient 
proof   against    the    alleged    origin    of    the    New 
Testament,   but  there  is  an  equally  strong  pre- 
sumption that  the  so-called  historical  elements  of 


BUDDHA   AND    HIS    GALILEAN   SUCCESSOR.      25 

that  work  are  almost  wholly  fabulous.    The  com- 
mittee of  the  church-council  that  made  the  "four 
Gospels"  the  canons  of  their  faith  had  to  select 
them  from  fifty-four  contradictory  versions.     The 
evangelists  themselves  contradict  each  other  on 
many  essential  points;  and  their  chronicles  can 
hardly  have  been  written  before  the  end  of   the 
second  century,  as  not  one  of  the  earlier  fathers 
(before  Irenseus)  ever  quotes  a  single  passage  of 
their  text,  while  they  relate  many  events  which 
seem  to  have  been  recorded    in  the  apocrypha. 
These  apocrypha,  like    the    arbitrarily  excepted 
works,  originated  in  a  century  so  prolific  of  spuri- 
ous prophecies,  forged  epistles  and  biographies, 
that  it  has  justly  been  called  the  age  of   pious 
frauds.    The  four  Gospels,  as  well  as  the  larger 
part  of  the  Pauline  Epistles,  were  repudiated  by 
the  Socinians,  and  others  of  the  more  intelligent 
sects  of  the  early  Christians.     It  is  equally  certain 
that  the  stupendous  events  supposed  to  have  at- 
tended the  appearance  of  the  new  prophet  are  not 
recorded  by  any  contemporary  pagan  author,  and 
that  the  short  passage  in  the  seventh  chapter  of 
Josephus    is  a  clumsy  forgery.      Josephus,    who 
describes    the    reign  of    Herod    in    its   minutest 
details,  never  mentions  the  miracles  of  Bethlehem, 
the  appearance  of  a  new  star,  the  massacre  of  the 
innocents,  or  the  prodigies  of  the  crucifixion. 

Besides,  the  rhetoric  of  the  New  Testament  is 
throughout  illustrative  rather  than  persuasive :  it  is 
the  eloquence  which  distinguishes  the  communica- 
tion of  transmitted  from  the  introduction  of  origi- 
nal ideas.    And,  as  Feuerbach  well  observes,  the 


26         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

testator's  strange  neglect  to  insure  the  record  of 
his  revelation  by  committing  it  to  writing  is  a 
strong  presumption  that  he  delivered  his  gospel  as 
a  pre-recorded  doctrine. 

But  all  such  discoveries  led  only  to  negative 
results,  and  increased  the  obscurity  of  the  main 
question,  when  the  study  of  the  Oriental  classics, 
that  had  shed  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  etymology 
of  the  West- Aryan  languages,  began  to  elucidate 
the  mysteries  of  Biblical  exegesis.    Dark  words 
were  traced  to  their  origin,  occult  passages  as- 
sumed a  meaning,  perplexing  contradictions  be- 
came suggestive  analogies.    Buddhism  not  only 
explained  the  doctrines  of  the  New  Testament,  but 
harmonized    them  by  revealing    the    root-dogma 
which  forms  the  connecting  link  of  their  logical 
correlation.      The  doctrine  of  Pessimism  is  the 
master-key  to  the  ethical  enigmas  of  the  Christian 
creed.     If  the   blessings  of  earth  are  curses   in 
disguise,  it  behooves   the  wise  to  renounce   his 
material  possessions,  and  despise  the  precautions 
by  which  the  worldly-minded  seek  to  protect  them- 
selves against  want  and  misfortune.    If  our  nat- 
ural instincts  are  wholly  evil,  it  would  be  merito- 
rious to  love  our  enemies  and  hate  our  father, 
mother,  sister,  brother,   and  children,  "yea,  and 
our  own  life."    If  God  has  created  a  world  the 
sorrows  of  which  so  far  exceed  its  blessings,  it 
would  be  perfectly  consistent  to  expect  in  a  future 
life  a  similar  proportion  of  good  to  evil :  Heaven 
for  the  elect  —  ten  or  twelve  out  of  ten  thousand ; 
for  the  rest,  an  eternity  of  frightful  tortures.     If 
the  pursuit  of  earthly  happiness  is  a  chimera,  the 


BUDDHA   AND    HIS   GALILEAN    SUCCESSOR. 


27 


children  of  light  should  prove  their  freedom  from 
that  delusion  by  the  mortification  of  their  desires 
and  natural  impulses :  fasting,  passive  submission 
to  injustice,  sackcloth  and  ashes,  and  celibacy  * 

The  anti-cosmic  tendency  of  the  Christian  doc- 
trine distinguishes  it  from  all  religions  except 
Buddhism.  In  the  language  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, the  "world"  is  everywhere  a  synonyme  of 
evil  and  sin ;  the  flesh,  everywhere  the  enemy  of 
the  spirit.  And,  when  the  first  Christian  mission- 
aries reached  the  sacred  cities  of  Thibet,  they  were 
astounded  to  recognize  in  the  sacraments  and  cere- 
monies of  Buddhism  all  the  essential  features  of 
their  own  cultus.  The  Transactions  of  the  Royal 
Asiatic  Society  (Vol.  II.,  p.  491)  mentions  the 
"celibacy  of  the  Buddhist  clergy,  and  the  monastic 
life  of  the  societies  of  both  sexes,  to  which  might 
be  added  their  strings  of  beads,  their  manner  of 
chanting  prayers,  their  incense  and  their  candles. 
Confession  of  sins  is  regularly  practised." 

Father  Hue,  in  his  Recollections  of  a  Journey  in 
Tartary,  Thibet,  and  China  (Hazlitt's  translation), 
says,  "The  cross,  the  mitre,  the  dalmatica,  the 
cope,— which  the  Grand  Lama  wears  on  his  jour- 
neys, or  if  he  is  performing  some  ceremony  out 
of  the  temple,— the  service  with  double  choirs,  the 
psalmody,  the  exorcisms,  the    censer    suspended 

•  Matt.  xix.,12,etc.  Referring  to  this  passage,  Strauss, 
in  his  Life  of  Jesus  (Vol.  I.,  p.  618  of  the  first  edition), 
savs,  "In  order  to  defend  Christ  against  the  charge  of 
unpractical  principles,  the  Christian  apologists  have  made 
haste  to  smuggle  in  the  idea  {den  Gcdanken  emzu- 
schwciAen)  thlt  Jesus  recommended  ee h  ,aej J  only  to 
his  disciples,  and  in  anticipation  of  the  pec V,^r  cliftcuities 
of  their  apostolic  mission;  but  the  truth  is  U»«m£»fu2 
other  passages  the  spirit  of  asceticism  reveals  itself  too 
plainly  to  be  mistaken." 


28         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

from  five  chains,  and  which  you  can  open  or 
close  at  pleasure;  the  benediction  given  by  the 
Lamas  by  extending  the  right  hand  over  the  heads 
of  the  faithful,  the  chaplet,  ecclesiastical  celibacy, 
religious  retirement,  the  worship  of  the  saints,  the 
fasts,  the  processions,  the  litanies,  the  holy  water, 
— all  these  are  analogies  between  the  Buddhists 
and  ourselves." 

The  analytical  methods  of  comparative  mythol- 
ogy have  since  been  applied  to  the  study  of  the 
Buddhistic  scriptures  and  the  writings  of  the  early 
Gnostics ;  and,  considering  the  results  of  that  com- 
parison, it  can  no  longer  be  doubted  that  Schopen- 
hauer's conjecture*  will  soon  become  an  estab- 
lished fact;  namely,  that  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth 
was  a  Buddhistic  emissary,  and  preached  his  gospel 
in  the  name  of  Buddha  Sakyamuni.  Myths  have  a 
curious  metamorphic  tendency.  In  a  large  num- 
ber of  indubitable  instances,  the  sayings,  doings, 
and  adventures  of  legendary  heroes  (or  myth- 
shrouded  historical  personages)  have  been  attrib- 
uted to  representative  men  of  a  later  period :  the 
exploits  of  a  Persian  archer,  first  to  a  Danish 
soldier,  and  afterward  to  a  Swiss  patriot ;  the  dicta 
of  Zoroaster,  to  several  of  his  followers ;  the  attri- 
butes of  the  old  Wood-god,  Woden,  to  Barbarossa, 
the  entranced  cave-dweller  of  the  Kyfhauser;  the 
adventures  of  the  Indian  Dawn- Spirits,  to  the 
heroes  of  Troy. 

By  a  similar  metastasis  of  myths,  the  traditions 
of  the  old  Hindu  Krishna  legend  were  transferred, 

*"I  cannot  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  the  Christian  creed 
will  yet  be  traced  to  a  Buddhistic  source."— Die  Welt  aU 
Wille,  Vol.  II.,  p.  716. 


BUDDHA   AND   HIS   GALILEAN  SUCCESSOR.      29 

first  to  the  founder  of  Buddhism,  and  afterward  to 
the  person  of  his  western  apostle.    Krishna,  like 
Buddha,    was    a     parthenogenitus,    a    virgin-son. 
Krishna  was  crucified;  and  the  sculptured  Pan- 
theon of  Brahmanism  includes  the  image  of  a  vir- 
gin, called  the  "Queen  of  Heaven,"  holding  an  in- 
fant and  cross  in  her  arms.    Krishna,  like  Buddha, 
astonished  his  teachers  by  his  precocious  wisdom. 
Both  were  born  with  a  f ufty  developed  power  of 
speech.     According  to  the  "Gospel  of  the  Infancy" 
(attributed  to  St.  Thomas),  Maria  holds  a  conver- 
sation with  her  new-born  son,  who  informs  her  of 
his  origin  and  his  divine  mission.     The  name  of 
her  Buddhistic  prototype  was  Maja.    Both  Krishna 
and  Buddha  were  of  royal  descent.     A  chorus  of 
celestial  singers  celebrated  the  moment  of  their 
birth.    The  ruler  of  Krishna's  birthland  is  fright- 
ened by  a  prophecy,  and  resolves  the  death  of  the 
infant.    The  boy's  parents  save  his  life  by  a  timely 
flight,  and  conceal  him  for  several  years.      The 
baffled  despot  commands  the  massacre  of  all  male 
children  of  his  kingdom.     The  "Gospel  of  the  In- 
fancy" relates  the  miraculous  achievements  of  the 
Christ-child,  his  combats  with  serpents  and  drag- 
ons, the  fate  of  persons  who  insult  him  and  are 
stricken  dead,  a  council  of  young  boys  who  choose 
him  as  their  king.    The  boy  Krishna,  according  to 
the   Bhagavat  Purana,  subdues    a    fiery  serpent, 
strikes  dead  persons  who  insulted  him,  and  in  his 
plays  with  other  boys   is  chosen  as  their  king. 
Krishna,  like  Buddha,  had  twelve  favorite  disciples 
who  accompanied  him  on  his  missionary  travels. 
Krishna,  like  Buddha,  is  tempted  in  the  wilder- 


30  THE    SECRET    OF    THE    EAST. 

ness  by  the  devil,  rejects  all  proposals,  and  rejoices 
with  a  host  of  ministering  angels. 

In  the  constellation  of  the  Pleiades,  six  larger 
and  forty  or  fifty  smaller  stars  are  crowded  together 
within  a  space  that  could  be  enclosed  by  the  appar- 
ent circumference  of  the  moon.  Either  these  stars 
form  a  correlative  system,  or  their  aggregation  in 
the  field  of  our  vision,  as  well  as  the  nearly  uni- 
form size  of  the  larger  ones,  must  be  ascribed  to 
the  strangest  kind  of  coincidence  ;  and  the  astron- 
omer Olbers  calculates  that  the  probability  of  the 
former  hypothesis  exceeds  that  of  the  latter  about 
twenty-five  million  times.  With  a  similar  degree 
of  assurance,  the  student  of  the  Hindu  scriptures 
must  reject  the  belief  in  the  accidental  analogies 
of  the  above-named  traditions ;  and  an  equally 
untenable  theory  is  the  conjecture  of  the  Jesuit 
missionaries,  that  the  Buddhists  derived  their  le- 
gends from  the  Christian  sect  of  the  Nestorian 
heretics.  We  might  as  well  be  asked  to  believe 
that  Homer  borrowed  his  epic  from  the  Iliad  of 
Alexander  Pope. 

Together  with  the  unmistakable*  doctrine  of 
Buddha  Sakyamuni,  the  prophet  of  Galilee  prob- 

*Even  in  the  modified  form  of  the  canonized  Gospels. 
But,  besides,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  Church  eliminated 
a  large  number  of  unpractical  dogmas.  Nine-tenths  of  the 
early  "heretics"  were  too  literal  Buddhists  to  suit  the  pur- 
pose of  the  shrewd  and  compromising  hierarchs.  The 
Encratite3  abstained  from  wine,  animal  food,  and  marri  ige. 
The  Marcionites  denounced  all  "worldliness,"— the  pursuit 
of  wealth,  office-holding,  fine  houses,  and  clothes,  etc.  The 
Montanists  tried  to  purify  their  souls  by  fasting  and  long 
vigils,  and  often  took  a  "vow  of  solitude,"  like  the  Cinga- 
lese Buddhists,  and  retired  for  years  to  the  lonely  high- 
lands of  the  Phrygian  Mountains.  The  Valentinians  prac- 
tised communism,  and  subjected  their  novices  to  all  sorts  of 
ascetic  ordeals.  The  Cassianites  professed  doctrines  which 
resembled  those  of  the  modern  "Shakers." 


BUDDHA   AND   HIS   GALILEAN   SUCCESSOR.      31 

ably  disseminated  the  current  tradition  about  the 
miracles  and  adventures  of  his  master ;  and,  when 
in  the  oral  traditions  of  the  next  century  the  rec- 
ords of  Buddha  and  Christ  had  coalesced,  the  East 
Indian  legend  was  transferred  to  the  soil  of  Pales- 
tine, while  the  myth-making  faculty  of  the  monastic 
historians  supplied  the  details  of  the  local  coloring. 
The  history  of  Krishna  fades  in  the  cloudland 
of  primeval  traditions,  and  seems  to  be  largely 
blended  with  astronomical  myths.  The  historical 
existence  of  Buddha  Sakyamuni,  on  the  other 
hand,  can  hardly  be  doubted,  nor  that  of  his  glow- 
ingly eloquent  West- Asiatic  apostle.  The  records 
of  the  earlier  Gospels  are  too  fragmentary  and  con- 
tradictory to  reconstruct  a  trustworthy  biography 
of  the  Galilean  Buddhist,  but  his  system  of  ethics 
proves  that  it  was  the  main  object  of  his  mission 
to  graft  the  doctrine  of  Buddha  upon  the  optimistic 
theism  of  the  Hebrew  law-giver.  Hence,  the  dog- 
matical contradictions  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments ;  the  prominence  assigned  to  the  (ante-Mo- 
saic) paradise  legend  *  the  penitential  psalms,  and 

In  refuting  these  heretics,  it  is  curious  to  notice  how 
Clemens  Alexandnnus  uniformly  appeals  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  quietly  ignores  the  precepts  of  the  ascetic  ap- 
pendix. The  third  book  of  the  Stromata  is  a  perfect  reduc- 
tio  ad  absurdum  of  Christian  pessimism,  which,  neverthe- 
less, gained  ground  wherever  the  belief  in  the  new  revela- 
tion was  sincere  enough  to  turn  theory  into  practice 

♦'The  essence  of  the  Christian  religion  is  the 'centre 
dogma  of  Buddhism,— the  doctrine  of  the  worthlessness  of 
terrestrial  life.  With  this  difference  only,  that  Christianity 
dates  that  worthlessness  from  the  transgression  of  our 
apple-eating  forefather-.  This  modification  implied  the 
fiction  of  a  hber%  arbitrii  indlfferentiae ;  but  it  was  re- 
quired by  the  necessity  of  grafting  the  doctrine  of  Buddha 
upon  the  mythological  dogmas  of  Judaism.  The  myth  of 
the  Fall  offered  here  the  only  basis  for  the  insertion  of  the 
scion  from  the  East  Indian  parent-tree."— Schonenhanfir 
Die  Welt  als  Wille,  Vol.  II.,  p!  694.  acnopennauer, 


32         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

all  passages  that  could  be  made  to  assume  a  pes- 
simistic significance;  the  open  rejection  of  the 
Mosaic  health-code  (as  absolutely  irreconcilable 
with  the  gospel  of  anti-naturalism),  the  sophistry 
of  the  Patristic  writings,  and  the  forced  interpre- 
tations of  the  Hebrew  prophecies.  Hence,  also, 
the  old  but  ever  new  controversy  of  the  Pelagians 
and  Gnostics,  the  former  leaning  toward  the  ra- 
tional, manly,  and  realistic  part,  the  other  toward 
the  mystical,  pessimistic,  and  puling  part  of  our 
heterogeneous  Scriptures. 

Like  the  votaries  of  Zoroaster,  the  Hebrew  Uni- 
tarians preserved  the  purity  of  their  religion ;  but 
the  seed  of  the  East  Indian  upas-tree  did  not 
perish.  In  the  superstition-loaded  atmosphere  of 
Egypt  and  the  effete  vice-centres  of  Asia  Minor,  it 
found  a  more  congenial  climate,  where  it  flourished, 
and  finally  betrayed  its  origin  by  bearing  fruits 
after  its  kind,  though  its  roots  are  still  encrusted 
with  the  soil  of  the  land  that  rejected  it. 

Note.— Tide  Appendix,  Indian  Sources  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment and  Concordance  of  Christianity  and  Buddhism. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   ETHICS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   RELIGION. 

"Untruth  should  be  exposed,  whether  its  teachers  come 
in  the  name  of  God  or  of  the  devil."—  Ulrich  Hutten. 

In  the  code  of  ethical  principles  which  the 
world  uses  to  judge  the  merits  of  a  social  reformer, 
it  has  long  been  recognized  as  a  truism  that  "the 
end  does  not  justify  the  means."  But  we  are  apt 
to  overlook  the  equally  cogent  maxim  that  the 
means  do  not  justify  the  end.  The  unkempt 
republican,  who  with  fire  and  sword  preaches  the 
earth-redeeming  gospel  of  liberty  and  equality,  is 
denounced  as  an  enemy  of  the  human  race ;  while 
the  bland,  well-combed,  and  unctuous  Jesuit  is 
revered  as  a  saint,  though  he  labors  to  perpetuate 
a  superstition  that  has  turned  the  better  half  of 
this  earth  into  a  desert,  and  arrested  the  progress 
of  the  human  race  for  fourteen  hundred  years. 
Our  short-sightedness  prevents  us  from  tracing  the 
connection  of  cause  and  effect  in  the  fury  of  the 
purifying  storm  and  the  soft  summer  winds  of  the 
malarious  fens.  We  shudder  at  the  rage  of  the  gale, 
and  admire  the  beauty  of  the  poisonous  swamp- 
flower. 

To  the  nations  of  the  Caucasian  race,  the  genius 
of  salvation  did  twice  appear  in  a  storm-cloud,  the 
lures  of  the  tempter  came  in  a  small,  still  voice. 
The  sound  of  that  voice  was  first  heard  on  the  banks 


34  THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

of  the  Ganges,  and  filled  the  lands  of  the  East  till 
its  echo  seduced  the  poor  fishermen  on  the  banks  of 
the  Jordan.  The  keystone  dogma  of  the  Christian 
ethics  is  the  anti-physical  principle  of  Buddhism : 
whatever  is  natural  is  wrong.  The  mission  of  the 
Galilean  ascetic,  like  the  gospel  of  Buddha  Sakya- 
muni,  was  a  declaration  of  war  against  nature. 
According  to  the  doctrine  of  Pessimism,  our 
natural  instincts  are  our  natural  enemies ;  life  is  a 
disease,  and  death  its  only  cure;  the  pursuit  of 
earthly  happiness  is  a  chimera,  and  enjoyment  in 
all  its  forms  only  serves  to  strengthen  the  fatal 
delusion;  emancipation  from  the  bondage  of  life 
is  the  summum  bonum,  and  can  be  attained  only  by 
mortifying  our  natural  desires. 

The  instinctive  love  of  joy  is  wrong :  the  path  of 
self-affliction  is  the  road  to  salvation.  "If  any  man 
will  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself,  and 
take  up  his  cross  daily."  "Blessed  are  they  that 
mourn."  "Be  afflicted  and  mourn  and  weep;  let 
your  laughter  be  turned  to  mourning,  and  your  joy 
to  heaviness."  "Woe  unto  you  that  laugh,  for 
you  shall  mourn  and  weep." 

Our  natural  affections  should  be  suppressed. 
"If  any  man  come  to  me  and  hate  not  his  father 
and  mother,  and  wife  and  children,  and  brothers 
and  sisters,  yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot 
be  my  disciple." 

The  love  of  health  is  wrong:  the  body  is  the 
enemy  of  the  spirit,  and  does  not  deserve  our  care. 
"Take  no  thought  for  your  life,  what  ye  shall  eat 
or  what  ye  shall  drink,  nor  yet  for  your  body, 
what  ye  shall  put  on."     "Bodily  exercise  profiteth 


THE   ETHICS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   RELIGION.   35 

but  little."     "There  is  nothing  from  without  a 
man  that,  entering  him,  can  defile  him." 

The  pursuit  of  natural  science  is  wrong ;  doubt 
and  free  inquiry  are  sinful;  submissive  faith  is 
the  gate  to  heaven.  "Blessed  are  they  that  have 
not  seen,  and  yet  have  believed."  "He  that  believ- 
eth  in  me  hath  everlasting  life,  and  shall  not  come 
into  condemnation."  "If  any  man  love  not  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  let  him  be  Anathema  Marana- 
tha."  "If  an  angel  from  heaven  preach  any  other 
gospel  unto  you  than  that  which  we  have 
preached,  let  him  be  accursed."  "He  that  believ- 
eth  on  me  is  not  condemned,  but  he  that  believeth 
not  is  condemned  already,  because  he  does  not 
believe  in  the  name  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of 
God."  "If  a  man  abide  not  in  me,  he  is  cast  forth 
as  a  branch,  and  is  withered ;  and  men  gather  them 
and  cast  them  into  the  fire,  and  they  are  burned." 
"  He  that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be  saved, 
but  he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned." 

The  trust  in  secular  remedies  is  wrong :  diseases 
can  be  cured  by  faith.  "Receive  thy  sight,  thy 
faith  hath  saved  thee."  "If  any  man  is  sick 
among  you,  let  him  call  for  the  elders  of  the 
church,  and  let  them  pray  over  him,  anointing  him 
with  oil  in  the  name  of  the  Lord."  "And  the 
prayer  of  faith  shall  save  the  sick,  and  the  Lord 
shall  raise  him  up."  "And,  when  he  had  called 
unto  him  his  twelve  disciples,  he  gave  them  power 
against  unclean  spirits  to  cast  them  out,  and  to 
heal  all  manner  of  sickness  and  all  manner  of 
disease." 

The  natural  instinct  of  resistance  to  injustice 


36         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

is  wrong.  "Resist  not  evil,  but  whosoever  shall 
smite  thee  on  the  right  cheek  turn  to  him  the 
other  also. ...  If  any  man  will  sue  thee  at  the  law 
and  take  away  thy  coat,  let  him  have  thy  cloak 
also.  And  whosoever  shall  compel  thee  to  go  a 
mile,  go  with  him  twain."  "Of  him  that  taketh 
away  thy  goods  ask  him  not  again." 

The  spirit-fancies  of  the  nature-loving  nations 
are  wrong.  The  wilderness  swarms,  not  with 
harmless  fairies,  but  with  malevolent  demons. 
"And  the  unclean  spirit  goeth,  and  taketh  with 
himself  seven  other  spirits  more  wicked  than  him- 
self." "I  beheld  Satan  as  lightning  fall  from  heaven. 
.  . .  And  all  the  devils  besought  him,  saying,  Send 
us  into  the  swine,  that  we  may  enter  into  them." 
"And  the  devil  took  him  up  into  the  holy  city,  and 
setteth  him  on  a  pinnacle  of  the  temple."  "They 
brought  unto  him  many  that  were  possessed  with 
devils." 

The  belief  in  the  peace  of  the  grave  is  errone- 
ous. For  the  great  plurality  of  the  human  race, 
the  end  of  life  is  the  beginning  of  endless  and  hor- 
rible tortures.  "Wide  is  the  gate  and  broad  is  the 
way  that  leadeth  to  destruction,  and  many  there 
be  which  go  in  thereat ;  and  strait  is  the  gate  and 
narrow  is  the  way  which  leadeth  unto  life,  and  few 
there  be  that  find  it."  "The  children  of  the  king- 
dom shall  be  cast  out  into  utter  darkness,  there 
shall  be  weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth."  "They 
shall  be  cast  into  the  furnace  of  fire,  there  shall  be 
wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth."  "  They  shall  be 
tormented  with  fire  and  brimstone  in  the  presence 
of  the  holy  angels  and  in  the  presence  of  the 


THE   ETHICS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   RELIGION.   37 

Lamb."  "And  the  smoke  of  their  torment  ascend- 
eth  forever  and  ever,  and  they  have  no  rest  day 
nor  night." 

The  love  of  industry  is  wrong.  A  true  believer 
shall  not  seek  to  supply  his  wants  by  earthly 
means,  but  rely  on  prayer  and  supernatural  aid : 
"Take  no  thought,  saying,  What  shall  we  eat? 
what  shall  we  drink?  or  wherewithal  shall  we  be 
clothed  ?  For  after  all  these  things  do  the  Gentiles 
seek."  "Take  no  thought  of  the  morrow,  for  the 
morrow  shall  take  thought  for  the  things  of  itself." 
"Ask,  and  it  shall  be  given  you."  "If  ye  have 
faith  as  a  grain  of  mustard-seed,  ye  shall  say  unto 
this  mountain,  Remove  hence  to  yonder  place,  and 
it  shall  remove;  and  nothing  shall  be  impossible 
unto  you." 

These  dogmas  were  propagated  with  the  zeal 
and  with  the  disinterestedness  of  the  purest  moral 
enthusiasm ;  and  yet  there  is  no  doubt  that  they 
have  caused  the  human  race  more  woe  than  all 
wars,  all  plagues,  all  famines,  all  poisons,  and  con- 
tagious diseases,  and  the  rage  of  all  the  hostile 
elements  of  nature  taken  together :  for  it  can  be 
demonstrated  with  the  utmost  certainty  of  histori- 
cal evidence  that  the  darkness  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  the  horrors  and  the  misery  of  that  terrible 
night,  were  the  direct  consequences  of  the  faith 
which  attempted  to  practise  the  precepts  of  the 
New  Testament,  and  that  the  repressed  instincts 
of  our  better  nature  burst  their  dam  when  the 
faith  of  the  Middle  Ages  dissolved  into  scepticism 
and  the  conventional  assent  that  stops  short  of 
practice. 


38  THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

The  worship  of -sorrow  dogma  led  to  the  self 
torturing  insanities  of  mediaeval  monachism.  If 
physical  pleasures  are  sinful  and  our  physical  in- 
stincts an  impediment  to  our  spiritual  welfare,  the 
seekers  after  salvation  naturally  concluded  that 
the  body  must  be  treated  like  a  wild  beast,  caged 
in  monasteries  and  hermitages,  and  subdued  by 
fasting,  vigils,  and  all  kinds  of  self-afflictions.* 
Hence,  Anchorites,  Flagellants,  Celibates,  Trap- 
pists,  Puritans,  Sabbatarians,  and  Shakers. 

True  friendship  was  unknown  while  the  de- 
nunciator of  natural  affection  passed  for  a  divine 
revelator.  "He  that  hateth  not  his  father  and 
brother,"  etc.,  "cannot  be  my  disciple."  "For  if 
ye  love  those  who  love  you,  what  reward  have 
you  ?"  Hence,  the  zeal  of  the  wretched  bigots  who 
delivered  up  their  friends  to  the  knife  of  the  Holy 
Inquisition,  and  exulted  in  the  suppression  of  their 
better  instincts. 

The  repudiation  of  the  Mosaic  health  code  and 
the  pagan  culture  of  the  manly  powers  led  to  the 
physical  degeneration  of  two-thirds  of  the  noblest 
Caucasian  races.  If  the  body  is  the  enemy  of  the 
spirit,  the  promotion  of  its  welfare  would  be  a 
sheer  waste  of  time,  or  even  a  crime  against  our 
higher  and  eternal  interests.  Hence,  the  neglect 
of  physical  education,  the  gluttony,  the  besotted- 
ness,  and  the  crimes  against  nature  in  which  the 
seed-plots  of  monachism  vied  with  the  vice-centres 

*"If  any  sect,"  says  Ludwig  Borne,  "should  ever  take  it 
into  their  heads  to  worship  the  devil  in  his  distinctive 
qualities,  and  devote  themselves  to  the  promotion  of  hu- 
man misery  in  all  its  forms,  the  catechism  of  such  a  relig- 
ion could  be  found  ready-made  in  the  code  of  several  mon- 
astic colleges." 


THE    ETHICS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   RELIGION.   39 

of  the  decaying  Roman  Empire,*  the  general  neg- 
lect of  sanitary  precautions,  which  shortened  the 
average  longevity  of  mediaeval  Europe  by  fourteen 
or  fifteen  years. 

The  faith-cure  dogma  is  the  root  of  mediaeval 
miracle-mongery.  If  diseases  could  be  averted  by 
prayer,  medical  science  and  sanitary  precautions 
were  equally  superfluous.  Lazy  faith  was  easier 
than  rational  research,  and  the  belief  in  the  efficacy 
of  exorcism  enabled  the  Church  to  share  the  emol- 
uments without  the  labors  of  secular  science. 
Hence,  Loretto  chapels,  Lourdes  water,  processions, 
consecrated  rosaries,  and  relic  swindle. 

The  propagandists  of  the  Submission  to  Injus- 
tice dogma  became  the  faithful  ally  of  every  form 
of  despotism.  The  pagan  pride  in  the  majesty  of 
self-reliant  manhood  was  superseded  by  the  wor- 
ship of  abject  self-abasement  and  self-distrust.  If 
human  nature  was  essentially  evil,  men  were  unfit 
for  self  government ;  and  their  own  welfare  required 
the  suppression  of  every  revolt  against  the  author- 
ity of  the  spiritual  powers.  Without  the  recogni- 
tion of  human  rights,  without  the  principles  of 
personal  dignity  and  natural  justice, f  social  order 

*  "Quod  enim  Anno  1538,  prudentissimus  Rex  Henrietta 
Octavus  cucullatorum  coenobia,  et  sacrificoruin  collegia, 
votariorum,  per  venerabiies  legum  Doctores  Tliomam 
Leum,  Richardum  Laytonum  visitari  fecerat,  et  tanto  nu- 
rnero  reperti  sunt  apud  eos  scortatores,  cinaedi,  ganeones, 
pae  licones,  puerarii,  paederastae,  Sodornitae,  Ganiinedes, 
ut  in  unoquoque  eorutn  novarn  credideris  Gomorrham.' 
Robert  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  p.  449.  And  the 
state  of  affairs  in  Southern  Europe  is  attested  by  numer- 
ous unquotable  passages  in  the  memoirs  of  the  Italian 
Guiccardini,  the  writings  of  the  Spaniard  Sanchez,  and  the 
indictment  of  Pope  John  XXII. 

t  "Justice  and  equity  were  foreign  to  that  creed.    Why 
should  man  try  to  be  better  than  his  God?    A  God  to  whom 


40         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

became  a  legalized  system  of  oppression,  manliness, 
became  a  stigma,  the  love  of  freedom  was  denounced 
as  a  sign  of  an  unregenerate  heart.  Hence,  the  na- 
tional degradation  of  so  many  Aryan  nations,  their 
sickening  flunkeyism,  their  heartless  subservience 
to  the  caprices  of  brutal  despots.  As  Herbert  Spen- 
cer demonstrates  in  his  masterly  resume  of  the  dan- 
gers in  the  path  of  a  progressive  republic,  a  defiant 
resistance  to  every  form  of  injustice  and  official 
despotism  is  the  price  of  liberty,  and  that  resist- 
ance is  incompatible  with  the  spirit  of  a  system 
that  inculcates  the  duty  of  self-abasement  as  an 
article  of  faith.  The  pagan  martyrs  died  for 
human  rights,  for  personal  freedom  and  national 
independence.  The  Christian  martyrs  died  for  a 
system  of  spiritual  slavery.  The  Byzantine  bigots 
who  massacred  each  other  in  their  competition  for 
a  lackeyship  at  the  court  of  the  New  Jerusalem 
could  not  defend  their  own  city  against  domestic 
despots  and  foreign  aggressors. 

they  were  taught  to  ascribe  a  monstrous  system  of  favor- 
itism :  arbitrary  grace  for  a  few  children  of  luck,  and  mill- 
ions foredoomed  to  eternal  damnation."— Feuerbach. 

"They  attributed  to  the  Creator  acts  of  injustice  and 
barbarity  which  it  would  be  absolutely  impossible  for  the 
imagination  to  surpass,  acts  before  which  the  most  mon- 
strous excesses  of  human  cruelty  dwindle  into  insignifi- 
cance, acts  which  are,  in  fact,  considerably  worse  than  any 
that  theologians  have  attributed  to  the  devil."— Lecky. 

"It  is  said  that  the  King  of  Morocco,  Muley  Ismael,  has 
five  hundred  children.  What  would  you  say  if  a  dervish  of 
Mount  Atlas  related  to  you  that  the  wise  and  good  Muley 
Ismael,  dining  with  his  family,  at  the  close  of  the  repast, 
spoke  thus:  'I  am  Muley  Ismael,  who  have  begotten  you 
for  my  glory;  for  I  am  very  glorious.  I  love  you  very  ten- 
derly, I  shelter  you  as  a  hen  covers  her  chickens.  I  have 
decreed  that  one  of  my  youngest  children  shall  have  the 
kingdom  of  Tafilet,  and  that  another  shall  possess  Morocco ; 
and  for  my  other  dear  children,  to  the  number  of  four  hun- 
dred and  ninety-eight,  I  order  that  one-half  shall  be  tor- 
tured and  the  other  burned,  for  I  am  the  Lord  Muley 
Ismael.' "—  Voltaire. 


THE    ETHICS    OF    TnE   CHRISTIAN    RELIGION.    41 

The  fanatics  who  originated  the  dogmas  of  ex- 
clusive salvation  by  faith,  and  hell-fire  as  a  punish- 
ment of  unbelief,  are  responsible  for  the  agonies 
of  the  three  million  human  beings  who  perished  in 
the  flames  of  the  stake.  It  is  a  libel  against  human 
nature  to  ascribe  the  barbarities  of  the  Middle 
Ages  to  an  innate  love  of  cruelty ;  and,  in  order  to 
account  for  the  numberless  epidemic  outbreaks  of 
truculent  fanaticism,  the  Christian  apologists  have 
to  invent  as  many  different  theories  as  the  mediaeval 
astronomers  who  attempted  to  reconcile  their  sys- 
tem with  the  apparently  eccentric  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies.  The  hypothesis  of  Copernicus 
solved  all  those  riddles,  and  a  similar  solvent  of 
otherwise  hopeless  enigmas  is  the  vainly  disputed 
fact  that  the  inhumanities  of  our  Christian  ances- 
tors were  the  inevitable  consequences  of  a  sincere 
belief  in  the  dogmas  of  their  monstrous  creed. 
The  most  relentless  butchers  of  the  Holy  Inquisi- 
tion were  men  of  spotless  personal  morality.  Many 
of  the  savage  man-hunters  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War 
were  conspicuous  for  their  clemency  in  private  and 
domestic  affairs.  Neither  the  Austrians  nor  the 
frugal  Spaniards*  are  by  nature  a  bloodthirsty 
race.  But  the  dogma  of  exclusive  salvation  left 
them  no  choice.  It  made  the  suppression  of  un- 
belief a  sacred  duty  ;  for,  if  the  propagation  of  er- 
roneous doctrines  could  doom  thousands  to  an  eter- 
nity of  unspeakable,  incomparable,  and  hopeless 
tortures,  the  objections  founded  upon  such  scruples 

*  "Travellers  are  unanimous  in  declaring  that  in  Spain  an 
intense  passion  for  the  bulldght  is  quite  compatible  with 
the  most  active  benevolence  and  the  most  amiable  dispo- 
sition."— Lecky. 


42         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

as  compassion  with  the  short  sufferings  of  a  con- 
demned heretic  must  have  assumed  an  appearance 
of  almost  idiotic  futility.* 

Hence,  inquisitions  and  crusades,  thirty  years' 
wars,  heretic-hunts,  massacres  of  St.  Bartholomew, 
expulsions  of  the  Moors,  and  extermination  of 
the  Albigenses.  Hence,  also,  that  chief  disgrace  of 
our  own  age, — the  cowardly  hypocrisy  which,  like 
an  all-pervading  poison-vapor,  taints  the  whole  at- 
mosphere of  our  social  life.  "The  fathers  laid  it 
down  as  a  distinct  proposition,"  says  Lecky,  "that 
pious  frauds  were  justifiable  and  even  laudable; 
and,  if  they  had  not  laid  this  down,  they  would 
nevertheless  have  practised  it  as  a  necessary  conse- 
quence of  the  doctrine  of  exclusive  salvation. 
Paganism  was  to  be  combated;  and,  therefore, 
prophecies  of  Christ  by  Orpheus  and  the  Sibyls 
were  forged,  lying  wonders  were  multiplied,  and 
ceaseless  calumnies  poured  upon  those  who,  like 
Julian,  opposed  the  Church.  That  tendency  tri- 
umphed wherever  the  supreme  importance  of  these 
dogmas  was  held.  Generation  after  generation,  it 
became  more  universal :  it  continued  till  the  very 
sense  of  truth  and  the  very  love  of  truth  were 
blotted  out  from  the  minds  of  men."  And  this 
mode  of  thought  has  survived  after  the  hot  fanati- 
cism which  engendered    it  has  cooled  down  to 

*  "Few  persons,  I  think,  can  follow  the  history  of  Chris- 
tian persecution  without  a  feeling  of  extreme  astonishment 
that  some  modern  writers,  not  content  with  maintaining 
that  the  doctrine  of  exclusive  salvation  ought  not  to  have 
produced  persecution,  have  ventured  in  defiance  of  the 
unanimous  testimony  of  the  theologians  of  so  manv  centu- 
ries, to  dispute  the  plain  historical  fact  that  it  did  produce 
it."— Lecky. 

"Haeretici  non  solum  excommunicari  sed  juste  occidi 
possunt."— Thomas  Aquinas,  Summa,  Vol.  II.,  Art.  III. 


THE    ETHICS    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    RELIGION. 


43 


frigid  bigotry.  The  root  of  hypocrisy  is  the  belief 
in  the  atoning  efficacy  of  faith,  or,  faute  de  mieux,  of 
conventional  conformity.  Our  bigots  sacrifice 
their  conscience  where  their  ancestors  sacrificed 
their  reason,  and  would  be  very  sorry  to  admit 
the  decadence  of  a  creed  that  enables  them  to 
maintain  the  reputation  of  respectable  principles 
by  such  easy  means  as  connivance,  cant,  and 
mental  prostitution. 

The  Prayer  vs.  Labor  dogma  was  a  death-blow  to 
industry  and  science.  Rational  agriculture  was 
abandoned  to  the  Moorish  infidels .*  Christians 
neglected  their  fields  and  sought  to  avert  famine 
by  prayer-meetings.  The  pursuit  of  natural  sci- 
ence was  regarded  with  suspicion.  Inventors  were 
denounced  as  magicians.  Erudition  was  considered 
a  prima  facie  evidence  of  unbelief.  Scientific 
progress  decreased  with  the  increase  of  the  belief 
in  the  efficacy  of  prayer.  Hence,  moral  and  physi- 
cal deserts;  the  desolation  of  the  once  fertile 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean;  a  thousand  years 
eclipse  of  common  sense f  and  reason  ;  mendicants, 

♦  "The  Spanish  Christians  considered  agriculture  beneath 
their  dienitv.  la  their  judgment,  war  and  religion  were 
the  only?wo 'avocations  worthy  of  being  followed  Some 
of  the  richest  parts  of  Valencia  and  Grenada  were  so  neg- 
lected that  means  were  wanting  to  teed  even  the  scanty 
population  remaining  there.  Whole  districts  were  de- 
serted, and  down  to  the  present  day  have  never  been 
repeopled.  All  over  Spain,  the  same  destitution  prevailed. 
That  once  rich  and  prosperous  country  was  covered  with  a 
rabble  of  monks  and /clergy,  whose  insatiate »  rapacity 
absorbed  the  little  wealth  yet  to  be  found.  The  fields .were 
left  uncultivated;  vast  multitudes  died  from  want  and 
exposure;  entire  villages  were  deserted:' -Buckles  Ms- 

Mioi  mionafsensible,  and  humane  appear  the  writings 
of  tbe  pagan  philosophers,  in  comparison  with  the  ghastly 
nonsense  of  the  monastic  authors!  ^  the  freest  cujes  of 
our  most  advanced  countries,  in  Concord  and  Heidelberg, 


44  THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

pious  vagabonds,  and  monastic  drones ;  blind  hatred 
of  progress,  mysticism,  supernaturalism,  and  con- 
tented ignorance. 

Has  Christianity  made  us  more  moral  ?  A  chorus 
of  stall-fed  obscurantists  will  denounce  the  impiety 
of  the  very  question ;  but  the  time  is  past  when  the 
shadow  of  the  cross  could  veil  a  multitude  of  sins 
against  truth,  and  with  the  help  of  God  we  will 
lift  some  of  these  veils.  A  fruitful  source  of  ethi- 
cal delusions  is  the  autodogmatic  fallacy,  or  the 
tendency  of  every  sect  to  judge  the  merits  of  its 
founder  by  the  standard  of  his  own  dogmas.  The 
votaries  of  barbarous  creeds  award  the  highest 
prize  of  virtue  to  deeds  of  relentless  ferocity. 
They  mistake  pity  for  weakness,  and  its  suppres- 
sion for  an  act  of  praiseworthy  heroism.  The 
followers  of  Confucius  inculcate  the  punctilious 
observance  of  ceremonies ;  and,  tried  by  that  stand- 
ard, the  Chinese  moralist  was  undoubtedly  the 
most  perfect  man.  The  worship  of  sorrow  has  so 
perverted  our  moral  ideals  that  for  long  centuries 
joylessness  and  self-affliction  ranked  among  the 
highest  virtues.  A  jaundiced,  whining  abstainer 
from  physical  enjoyments  was  the  Puritan  paragon 
of    moral  perfection.*    The   municipal   codes  of 

an  ancient  Athenian  would  feel  almost  at  home,  a  modern 
Unitarian  would  hail  Job  as  a  man  and  brother;  but  a 
resuscitated  priest  of  the  Middle  Ages  would  walk  our 
streets  like  a  spectre  defying  the  morning  sun. 

*  "Ac  ording  to  this  code,  all  the  natural  affections,  aU 
social  pleasures,  all  amusements,  and  all  the  joyous  in- 
stincts of  the  human  heart  were  sinful.  Tne  clergy  looked 
on  all  comforts  as  sinful  in  themselves,  merely  because  they 
were  comforts.  Thi  jrreat  object  of  life  was  to  be  in  a 
st  ite  of  constant  affliction.  Whatever  pleased  the  senses 
was  to  be  suspected.  It  mattered  not  what  a  man  liked: 
the  mere  fact  of  his  liking  it  made  it  sinful.  Whatever 
was  natural  was  wrong.' ' 


THE   ETHICS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   RELIGION.   45 

many  American  cities  still  contain  provisions  for 
the  suppression  of  public  amusements  on  the  only 
day  on  which  a  large  plurality  of  our  workingmen 
find  their  only  leisure  for  recreation.  The  old 
Egyptians  turned  their  funerals  into  holidays. 
We  celebrate  our  holidays  like  funerals.  Sublu- 
nary life,  according  to  a  still  prevalent  theory,  is 
a  state  of  probation  for  testing  a  man's  power  of 
self-denial.  God  is  supposed  to  delight  in  the  self- 
abasement  and  mortification  of  his  creatures.  A 
"man  of  sorrows"  is  our  ideal  of  moral  perfection. 
The  cross,  an  instrument  of  torture,  is  the  symbol 
of  our  creed.  That  creed  has  made  our  daily  life 
so  joyless  that  the  mere  prospect  of  a  change 
must,  indeed,  enhance  the  attractions  of  a  future 
existence. 

We  have  been  taught  to  treat  the  body  as  an 
enemy  of  the  soul;  and,  if  bodily  health  is  an 
obstacle  to  true  saintliness,  we  have  evidently 
progressed  in  the  path  of  salvation.  Under  the 
influence  of  a  sixteen  hundred  years'  reign  of  Anti- 
naturalism,  the  degeneration  of  the  South-Euro- 
pean races  has  reached  that  degree  where  terrestrial 
existence  ceases  to  be  a  blessing,  and  where  the 

"  Bathing,  being  wholesome  as  well  as  pleasant,  was  a 
particularly  grievous  offence;  and  no  man  could  be  allowed 
to  swim  on  Sunday.  It  was,  in  fact,  doubtful  whether 
swimming  was  lawful  for  a  Christian  at  any  time,  even  on 
week-days;  and  it  was  certain  that  God  had  on  one  occa- 
sion shown  his  disapproval  by  taking  away  the  life  of  a  boy 
while  he  was  indulging  in  that  carnal  practice. . . .  Even  on 
week-days,  those  who  were  imbued  with  religious  princi- 
ples hardly  ever  smiled,  but  sighed,  groaned,  and  wept. 
One  pious  elder  had  acquired  distinction  by  bis  faculty  for 
what  was  termed  'a  holy  groan.'  He  used  to  weep  mncbln 
Draver  and  preaching;  he  was  every  way  'most  savory. 
Eveyn  amongPyoung  children,  from  eight  years  old  upward, 
toys  and  glmes  were  bad,  and  it  was  a  g^od  sign  when 
they  were  discarded."-i?wc/fcte's  History  of  Civilization. 


46         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

undue  love  of  life  is  not  apt  to  prevent  the  appre- 
ciation of  spiritual  comforts. 

We  have  been  taught  that  faith— i.e.,  mental 
prostitution — is  a  prime  condition  of  eternal  wel- 
fare, and  in  many  countries  that  virtue  has  been  so 
earnestly  cultivated  that,  if  spiritual  poverty  is 
bliss,  the  kingdom  of  heaven  cannot  be  far  off. 

After  the  measure  of  such  standards,  the  Gospel 
of  Pessimism  has  certainly  regenerated  the  human 
race.  But  the  virtue  of  a  merchant  should  not  be 
weighed  on  his  own  balance.  The  merits  of  a 
creed  cannot  be  proved  by  its  conformity  to  its 
own  precepts.  The  standards  we  should  apply  are 
the  laws  of  nature,  the  revelations  of  science,  and 
the  lessons  of  history.  Such  tests  would  teach  us 
that  the  love  of  gloom  is  a  mental  disease ;  that,  in 
a  state  of  nature,  every  normal  function  is  con- 
nected with  a  pleasurable  sensation;  that  happi- 
ness, therefore,  is  the  normal  condition  of  every 
living  creature ;  that  to  enjoy  is  to  obey ;  and  that 
he  who  deprives  himself  or  his  child  of  any  inno- 
cent pleasure  commits  a  crime  against  nature. 
They  would  teach  us  that  physical  vigor  is  a  prime 
condition  of  moral  health,  and  that  he  who  neglects 
the  health-laws  of  nature  sins  against  his  soul  as 
well  as  against  his  body  *  They  would  teach  us 
that  light  is  the  harbinger  of  happiness,  that  the 

*  "When  life  has  been  duly  rationalized  by  science,  it  will 
be  seen  that,  among  a  man's  duties,  care  of  the  body  is  im- 
perative, not  only  out  of  regard  for  personal  welfare,  but 
also  out  of  regard  for  descendants.  His  constitution  will 
be  considered  as  an  entailed  estate,  which  ought  to  pass  on 
uninjured,  if  not  improved,  to  those  who  f ollww ;  and  it  will 
be  held  that  millions  bequeathed  by  him  will  not  compen- 
sate for  feeble  health  and  decreased  ability  to  enjoy  life."- 
Herbert  Spencer. 


THE    ETHICS    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN   RELIGION.    47 

sun  of  science  has  ripened  more  blessings  in  a 
single  year  than  the  moonshine  of  mysticism  in 
eighteen  centuries,  that  the  suppression  of  free 
inquiry  has  never  benefited  any  country,  and  that 
faith  without  reason  is  not  a  virtue,  but  a  vice. 
They  would  teach  us  that  the  love  of  earth  was 
the  gospel  of  all  progressive  nations,  that  the  love 
of  life  lends  wings  to  every  valiant  enterprise,  that 
the  love  of  joy  is  the  parent  of  every  healthy  in- 
stinct, while  the  worship  of  sorrow  has  never  pro- 
duced anything  but  monsters  and  chimeras.  They 
would  teach  us  that  pessimism  is  a  blasphemy 
against  the  Author  of  life,  against  the  Power  whose 
all-sustaining  hands  furnish  the  weapons  of  its 
very  assailants, — an  insane,  impious,  and  suicidal 
rebellion  against  our  All- mother  Nature,  a  foe  to 
happiness,  and  the  antithesis  of  all  true  religion. 

The  doctrines  of  the  Galilean  Buddhist  have  bur- 
dened the  record  of  human  misery  with  thousands 
of  devastating  wars.  Have  they  ever  added  one 
millet-seed  to  the  sum  of  human  happiness  ?  Did 
the  apostle  of  Nazareth  ever  speak  one  word  in 
favor  of  industry,  of  rational  education,  the  cause 
of  health,  the  love  and  study  of  nature,  of  physi- 
cal and  intellectual  culture?  Not  one.  Has  he 
promoted  our  progress  in  the  paths  of  science  and 
freedom?  Not  one  step.  The  phantasms  of  his 
sickly  anti-naturalism  have  made  the  world  neither 
better  nor  wiser.  His  doctrine  in  all  its  tendencies 
is  wholly  unearthly,  and  therefore  wholly  unavail- 
able for  any  secular  purpose. 

In  what  respect,  then,  has  the  human  race  been 
benefited  by  a  creed  that  has  perverted  their  ethi- 


48         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

cal  instincts  and  systematically  opposed  the  devel- 
opment of  their  physical  and  intellectual  faculties  ? 
"In  the  Duty  of  Disinterestedness,"  we  are  told, 
"Christianity  has  revealed  a  higher  type  of  virtue." 
A  new  type  would  be  more  correct,  if  the  study  of 
the  Buddhistic  Scriptures  had  not  revealed  the  true 
author  of  that  doctrine.  But  we  should  not  forget 
that  the  self-denial  of  the  New  Testament  is  not  the 
disinterestedness  of  liberality,  not  the  unselfishness 
of  friendship  or  patriotism,  but  the  self-abnegation  of 
pessimism,  the  indifference  to  the  weal  or  woe  of 
life  which  inspires  the  Buddhistic  renunciation  of 
worldly  possessions.  On  the  shores  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, that  disinterestedness  has  sadly  reduced 
the  interests  of  real  estate,  and  made  mundane  life 
extremely  uninteresting.  A  joy-loving  cultivator 
of  the  smallest  farm,  who  improves  his  land  and  his 
trees  and  surrounds  himself  with  a  troop  of  happy 
children,  benefits  the  world  more  than  a  whole  con- 
vent full  of  disinterested  Buddhists  with  their 
ascetic  crotchets  and  puling  pessimism. 

Has  Christianity  made  us  more  religious  ?  Its 
terrorism  once  covered  the  land  with  churches,  and 
the  steeples  of  those  churches  still  bristle  in  every 
city ;  but  religion — i.e.,  a  whole-souled  moral  enthu- 
siasm— requires  the  co-operation  of  heads  and 
hearts,  and  is  as  different  from  mediaeval  devil- 
panics  as  from  the  stock-list-consulting  sanctimony 
of  our  Sabbatarian  Pecksniffs.  Whether  as  brain- 
less bigots  or  as  heartless  hypocrites,  the  defenders 
of  the  Trinitarian  dogma  have  always  been  the 
worst  enemies  of  natural  religion.  Even  a  moral 
atheist  would  object  to  the  absurdities  and  atroci- 


THE   ETHICS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   RELIGION.   49 

ties  they  ascribe  to  the  Supreme  Being,  but  there 
are  no  real  atheists  Naturalism,  Pantheism,  and 
Theism  are  only  ditierent  names  for  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  beneficence  and  omnipresence  of  the 
great  unseen  Power ;  and,  to  every  sincere  worship- 
per of  that  Power,  the  apotheosis  of  Nature's  enemy 
must  be  a  shocking  blasphemy  against  her  God. 

Has  the  Reformation  improved  our  moral  status  ? 
would  be  a  very  different  question  ;  for  that  reform, 
without  admitting,  and  perhaps  without  suspecting, 
its  ultimate  mission,  has  proved  itself  a  rather  pro- 
gressive one, — so  much,  indeed,  that  the  doctrine 
preached  from  the  pulpits  of  our  Protestant 
churches  is  not  Christianity,  but  an  eclectic  Bible 
doctrine,  mixed  with  at  least  fifty  per  cent,  of 
purely  pagan  ethics.  Outside  of  La  Trappe,  few 
human  beings  could  nowadays  allege  a  reason  for 
calling  themselves  Christians,  and  an  honest  repug- 
nance to  a  solecism  of  that  sort  has  perhaps  evolved 
the  nomenclature  of  our  countless  isms.  Most  Meth- 
odists know  that  some  of  Wesley's  doctrines  are  al- 
ready out  of  date ;  few  Calvinists  would  like  to  men- 
tion certain  tenets  of  the  Geneva  witch-hunter  ;  and 
neither  Catholics  nor  Old  Kirk  Presbyterians  can 
doubt  that  the  unqualified  dogmas  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament would  circumscribe  the  sphere  of  a  modern 
apostle  by  limiting  his  influence  to  the  audience  of 
a  lunatic  asylum. 

The  viands  served  in  the  refectory  of  our  spirit- 
ual purveyors  are  half  pagan  and  one-fourth  He- 
braic, but  the  Buddhistic  flavor  of  the  remaining 
fourth  greatly  impairs  the  digestibility  of  their  col- 
lation.    Their  temperance-precepts  are  neutralized 


50         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

by  the  doctrine  of  the  man  who  depreciated  the 
health-code  of  the  Mosaic  dispensation,  who  denied 
the  defiling  influence  of  "anything  that  enters  the 
mouth,"  and  who  once  proved  his  sincere  indiffer- 
ence to  the  physical  welfare  of  his  fellow-men  by 
manufacturing  a  considerable  quantity  of  intoxicat- 
ing drink.  The  worship  of  God  in  the  wonders  of 
his  visible  creation  is  counteracted  by  the  impious 
tenets  of  Anti-naturalism,  the  "vale  of  tears" 
dogma,  the  alleged  worthlessness  of  earthly  life, 
that  fills  convents  and  prebendaries  with  the  whin- 
ing gluttons  who 

"With  senseless,  base  ingratitude 
Cram,  and  blaspheme  their  feeder." 

The  worship  of  Nature  in  her  progressive  reve- 
lations, and  the  regenerative  influence  of  science, 
are  paralyzed  by  the  dogmas  of  natural  depravity 
and  salvation  by  faith;  and  every  champion  of 
human  rights  has  to  contend  with  the  rancorous 
opposition  of  the  creed  that  inculcates  the  duty  of 
self-abasement. 

Protestantism  has  already  eliminated  three-fourths 
of  the  pessimistic  elements  in  our  eclectic  system 
of  ethics ;  and,  even  in  the  interest  of  religion,  it 
ought  to  complete  its  task.  We  cannot  regain  our 
moral  health  till  we  cease  to  consult  the  oracle  of 
a  life-hating  fanatic  and  to  disregard  the  teachings 
of  our  life-preserving  instincts.  Religion  will  ful- 
fil its  mission  when  our  Unitarians  begin  to  deserve 
their  name  by  renouncing  the  dogmas  of  the  blas- 
phemous age  when  the  offerings  intended  for  the 
Temple  of  our  God  were  carried  to  the  house  of  a 
usurper.    We  must  choose  between   Nature  and 


THE  ETHICS  OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  RELIGION.  51 

Anti-naturalism.  The  compromise  plan  has  failed. 
If  the  Prophet  of  Galilee  was  a  god,  we  must 
humbly  recognize  the  fact  that  it  has  pleased  the 
Supreme  Being  to  contradict  himself  in  his  direct 
and  indirect  revelation.  If  he  was  a  man,  I  hold 
that  the  blindness  of  his  followers  does  not  absolve 
us  from  the  duty  of  exposing  his  baneful  errors. 
Can  good  intentions  outweigh  the  consequences  of 
such  errors  ?  If  a  quack  kills  my  child  with  a  poi- 
son which  he  honestly  believed  would  cure  it,  I 
may  forgive  him  because  he  meant  to  do  me  good 
instead  of  harm ;  but  should  I  revere  him  as  a 
model  physician,  merely  because  his  intentions 
were  good  ?  And  should  the  same  reason  entitle 
the  Apostle  of  Anti-naturalism  to  be  worshipped  as 
a  saviour  ?  The  advocates  of  the  compromise  plan 
protest  against  the  revelation  of  the  whole  truth, 
and  hide  their  real  motives  behind  a  mask  of  chari- 
table forbearance;  but  that  mask  has  become 
threadbare,  and  to  their  protest  I  answer :  Truth 
needs  no  veil,  and  you  would  not  hesitate  to  expose 
the  delusions  of  your  unfortunate  fellow-men,  if 
you  did  not  desire  their  welfare  less  than  you  fear 
their  prejudices. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    CONVERSION    OF    EUROPE. 

"Consistency  is  the  seal  of  truth." 

The  alliance  of  Christianity  and  barbarism,  and 
their  joint  triumph  over  the  civilization  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  form  the  most  fateful  episode  in 
the  annals  of  the  human  race ;  and  in  the  book  of 
history  no  other  page  is  so  stained  with  the  sweat 
of  laborious  sophisms.  To  what  complicated  theo- 
ries of  strange  coincidences  and  peculiar  mishaps 
the  Christian  apologists  have  to  resort,  in  order  to 
reconcile  the  alleged  merits  of  their  creed  with  the 
suspicious  circumstances  of  its  introduction  and 
the  monstrous  consequences  of  its  supremacy! 
From  year  to  year,  the  progress  of  science  has 
obliged  them  to  modify  their  hypothesis  by  quali- 
fying its  conclusions  or  falsifying  its  premises. 
But  the  evidence  of  history  remains,  and  the  only 
theory  which  can  account  for  the  persistent  uni- 
formity of  that  evidence  furnishes  also  the  key  to 
the  equally  persistent  duplicity  of  the  theorists 
who  wish  to  approximate  the  truth  of  historical 
facts  and  yet  dread  to  divulge  the  trade-secret  of 
their  creed. 

The  Religion  of  Antinaturalism  appealed  to  the 
pessimistic  tendency  of  decrepitude,  and  thus  recom- 
mended itself  to  the  instincts  of  a  decrepit  generation. 


THE   CONVERSION   OF   EUROPE.  53 

During  the  first  century  of  the  Cesarean  era,  the 
silence  of  the  pagan  moralists,  and  their  often  al- 
leged blindness  to  the  destiny  of  the  new  faith, 
admit  of  an  equally  simple  explanation :  they  did 
not  underrate  the  influence  of  the  Galilean  church, 
but  they  overrated  the  moral  health  of  a  nation 
which,  in  the  incipience  of  its  political  abasement, 
seemed  still  justified  in  despising  the  contagion  of 
a  creed  which  even  casual  observers  had  recognized 
as  an  "execrable  superstition."    For  the  descent 
from  Cato  to  Nero  was  really  a  mere  trifle,  com- 
pared with    the  fall  from  Nero    to  Constantine. 
The  murderer  of  Seneca  was  the  tyrant  of  a  proud 
commonwealth,  which  sought  and  found  means  to 
shake  off  his  yoke.    The  patron  of  Eusebius  tyran- 
nized a  community  of  submissive  slaves,  who  had 
lost  not  only  the  blessings,  but  the  instinct  of  lib- 
erty.   The  proud  stoicism  of  the  Roman  philoso- 
pher, the  beauty-worship  of  the  Roman  poet,  the 
joyous  nature- worship  of  the  Roman  peasant,  had 
all  given  way  to  the  whining  pessimism  of  the 
Galilean  bigots, — to  a  creed  which  superadded  the 
devil-panics  of  the  Egyptian  church  to  the  asceti- 
cism of    the    nature-hating    Buddhists.      Tacitus 
misread  the  signs  of  his  time.     But  let  us  put  our- 
selves in  his  place.    Even  if  the  stars  of  our  Re- 
public should  be  transferred  to  the  crown   of  a 
despot,  we  might  still  feel  ourselves  entitled  to  de- 
spise the  followers  of  an  Oriental  visionary  who 
should  deny  the  value  of  earthly  possessions  and 
the  competence  of  human  reason,  but  profess  his 
belief  in  devils  and  witches ;  who  should  denounce 
the  observance  of  sanitary  precautions,  the  prompt- 


54  THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

ings  of  our  natural  affections,  and  the  cultivation 
of  industrial  habits,  and  advise  his  disciples  to 
supply  their  wants  by  prayer  and  miracle  mongery. 
Even  our  Spiritualists,  even  the  Cherokese  wor- 
shippers of  the  Great  Spirit,  would  be  entitled  to 
execrate  the  superstition  of  the  bigots  who  should 
propagate  such  dogmas,  and  blaspheme  their  Crea- 
tor by  co-ordinating  his  name  with  that  of  their 
mystagogue. 

Tacitus  and  Suetonius  did  not  apprehend  any 
danger  from  such  sources ;  but  Oriental  vices  pre- 
pared the  way  for  Oriental  superstitions,  and  two 
hundred  years  later  the  countrymen  of  Scipio  Af- 
ricanus  had  accepted  the  yoke  of  a  creed  which  the 
countrymen  of  Judas  Maccabseus  rejected  with 
persistent  scorn. 

Worn-out  sensualists  consoled  themselves  with 
the  hope  of  a  better  hereafter.  Cowards  pleased 
themselves  in  the  idea  of  fulfilling  the  duty  of 
meek  submission  to  injustice  and  the  "powers  that 
be."  Monastic  drones  denounced  the  worldliness  of 
industrial  enterprises.  Physical  indolence  wel- 
comed the  discovery  that  "bodily  exercise  profiteth 
but  little."  Envious  impotence  insisted  on  the 
duty  of  self-abasement.  Transgressors  against  the 
health  laws  of  nature  relied  upon  the  efficacy  of 
the  prayer-cure.  Stall-fed  priests  sneered  at  the 
lean  philosopher  who  wasted  his  time  upon  labori- 
ous inquiries,  while  he  might  wax  fat  on  faith  and 
the  sacrifices  of  the  pious.  The  demon-dogma  was  a 
godsend  to  the  spiritual  poverty  of  the  elect.  The 
so-called  scholars  of  the  Galilean  church,  who 
could  not  encounter  the  pagan  philosophers  on 


THE    CONVERSION    OF    EURQPE.  55 

their  own   ground,   found  it  very  convenient  to 
postulate  a  spook  for  every  occult  phenomenon. 

But  moralists  who  clearly  discern  the  change  in 
the  ethical  standards  of  a  nation  are  apt  to  overlook 
the  progressiveness  of  that  change.     They  see  the 
present  and  the  past,  but  not  the  future.     In  the 
game  for  moral  supremacy,  the  pagan  philosophers 
had  all  the  good  players  on  their  side;  but  the 
Christians,  like  the  gods,  played  with  loaded  dice. 
Two  rival  crews  struggled  to  row  the  Ship  of  State 
in  opposite  directions  :  Health,  Manliness,  Reason, 
Science,  and  Optimism  arraigned  against  Disease, 
whining  Bigotry,  Unreason,  Fanaticism,  and  Pessi- 
mism.   But  the  Pessimists  had  the  winds  and  tides 
in  their  favor.     It  was  a  struggle  of  declining  phi- 
losophy against  growing  superstition.    Before  long, 
the  imperial  despots  recognized  their  mistake  in 
persecuting  a  creed  which  inculcated  the  duty  of 
passive  submission  to  oppressors,  and  the  doom  of 
Roman  liberty  was  sealed  when  on  its  grave  the 
despot  Constantine  erected  the  cross  of  the  Gali- 
lean Buddhist.     Claudius  Constantine,  the  Roman 
Haynau,  the  man  who  added  the  cant  of  Uriah 
Heep  to  the  crimes  of  a  Cambyses,  became  the 
Pontifex  Maximus  of  pessimism,  and,  in  the  view 
of  his  ecclesiastical  biographers,  atoned  for  all  his 
murders  by  making  Christianity  the  court-religion 
of  the  empire.     The  despotism  which  Nero  and  Ca- 
ligula had  exercised  under  the  influence  of  tempo- 
rary insanity,  or  in  defiance  of  laws  which  they 
otherwise  recognized,  was  then  elaborated  into  a 
system.     The  last  traces  of  the  old  democratic  in- 
stitutions were  utterly  abolished.    Where  the  poor- 


56  THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

est  plebeian  of  the  ancient  republic  would  have 
claimed  a  right,  the  proudest  patrician  had  now  to 
cringe  for  a  favor.  The  Roman  Padisha  retired  to 
Constantinople,  and  surrounded  himself  with  an 
army  of  flunkeys  and  eunuchs.  The  visitors  of 
the  Audience  Hall  were  required  to  perform  the 
rite  of  genuflexion,  and  submit  their  petitions  to 
the  caprice  of  the  autocrat.  From  the  decrees  of 
that  caprice  there  was  no  appeal.  The  imperial 
saint  compelled  his  father-in-law  to  hang  himself. 
His  brother-in-law  was  strangled  in  prison.  His 
nephew,  the  only  boy  of  a  widow,  had  his  throat 
cut.  His  eldest  son  was  beheaded,  and  his  wife 
was  strangled  in  a  bath.  The  will  of  the  despot 
was  officially  recognized  as  the  supreme  law.  Every 
symptom  of  political  or  religious  independence  was 
rigorously  suppressed,  and  the  alliance  of  Church 
and  State  bore  its  first-fruit  in  the  decree  which 
threatened  the  readers  of  Aryan  books  with  capi- 
tal punishment.  "In  hoc  vinces."  The  cross  had 
triumphed. 

There  is  an  old  Indian  tradition  that  Ravan,  the 
Prince  of  Darkness,  avenged  himself  upon  his  con- 
querors by  inviting  them  to  a  banquet  of  poisoned 
soma-vine.  The  myth  of  the  Python  and  the  le- 
gend of  Hercules  and  Nessus  are  echoes  of  that 
tradition,  and  its  meaning  has  been  illustrated  in 
the  fate  of  many  a  barbarous  nation  that  adopted 
the  vices  and  superstitions  of  its  conquered  rival. 
The  worshippers  of  sickly  saints  appealed  in  vain 
to  the  old  god  of  war;  and,  a  century  after  the 
death  of  Constantine,  the  hordes  of  the  Sarmatian 
steppe   dismembered   the   empire   of  the  nation 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  EUROPE.        57 

which,  for  centuries,  had  represented  the  highest 
mental  and  physical  development  of  the  human 
race.  But  the  dying  Centaur  avenged  himself  by 
the  bequest  of  a  moral  Nessus  shirt.  With  the 
purple  of  the  Csesars,  the  Gothic  chieftains  inher- 
ited the  poison  of  the  Galilean  pest. 

Polytheistic  savages  are  especially  apt  to  conclude 
that  their  intellectual  superiors  must  have  a  supe- 
rior fetich.    A  Yankee  missionary  once  confessed 
that  he  won  the  confidence  of  a  Fiji  Islander  by 
presenting  him  with  a  set  of  carpenters'  tools,  and 
describing  the  several  implements  as  a  Christian 
hatchet,  a  Christian  claw-hammer,  a  Christian  buck- 
saw.   The  barbarians  of  the  North  embraced  the 
religion  of  the  Roman  god  as  they  adopted  the 
code  of  the  Roman  lawyer  and  the  trappings  of 
the  Roman  cavalry.    When  the  savage  conquerors 
returned  to  their  native  villages,  they  could  hardly 
find  room  and  names  for  the  quantity  and  variety 
of  their  spoils,— purple,  gold  cloth,  curious  glass 
trinkets,  ornamental  shields,  sweetmeats  and  in- 
cense,  musical    slaves,  dancing-girls,  soothsayers, 
monkeys,  and  parrots.    To  commodities  of  that 
sort,  they  had  added  a  few  bishops  and  crosses. 
They  managed  to  acclimatize  them,  and  quite  en- 
joyed their  novel  acquisition.     The  poison  had  not 
yet  revealed  its  virulence.     A  little  while  after,  we 
find  them  involved  in  all  the  horrors  of  religious 
massacres,  witch-riots,  heretic-hunts,  devil-panics, 
and  manias  of  self-torture.      The  poison  had  be- 
gun to  operate. 

The  shadow  of  the  cross  began  to  creep  over  the 
face  of  the  earth.    The  sun  of  pagan  civilization 


58         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

still  gilded  the  horizon  with  its  last  rays,  but  the 
foul  birds  of  darkness  were  already  on  the  wing ; 
and  the  spectres  of  superstition  heralded  the  ad- 
vent of  the  dreadful  night  which  for  thirteen  cen- 
turies was  to  blight  and  darken  the  fairest  countries 
of  the  globe.  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  civil- 
ization of  the  East  revived  under  the  influence  of 
the  optimistic  doctrines  of  Islam,  while  the  civili- 
zation of  the  West  was  crushed  by  the  ascendency 
of  a  pessimistic  religion,  and  only  revived  at  the 
decline  of  its  influence.  Two  centuries  after  the 
conversion  of  Mecca,  the  sixteen  provinces  of  the 
Caliph  were  studded  with  academies.  Their  cult- 
ure and  prosperity  rivalled  the  Golden  Age  of  the 
Grecian  republics;  and,  six  hundred  years  later, 
the  Moors  of  Spain  were  still  the  teachers  of  Eu- 
rope in  science  and  arts,  as  well  as  in  industry  and 
agriculture.  Two  centuries  after  the  conversion  of 
Rome,  the  sun  of  reason  had  set  in  a  sea  of  in- 
sanity; and  that  night  was  broken  only  by  the 
dawn  of  modern  rationalism.  At  the  end  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  when  the  power  of  the  Church 
had  reached  its  zenith,  not  a  single  country  in 
Europe  had  gained  by  its  conversion  from  optimis- 
tic to  pessimistic  polytheism.  Every  school  had 
been  turned  into  a  seed-plot  of  superstition,  every 
jail  into  a  grave  of  liberty;  the  sword  of  Themis 
had  become  an  instrument  of  spiritual  despotism, 
literature  a  farrago  of  silly  fables,  science  a  sham ; 
the  tillers  of  the  soil  were  treated  like  wild  beasts, 
thinkers  and  inventors  as  criminals ;  the  enemies 
of  Nature  were  worshipped  as  the  ministers  of  her 
God. 


THE   CONVERSION   OF   EUROPE. 


50 


The  same  Germans  and  Celts  whom  the  Roman 
pagans  had  turned    into  intelligent  citizens  the 
Roman  Christians  turned  into  brutish  bigots.     At 
the  same  time,  when  Moorish  Spain  rivalled  the 
god-gardens  of  ancient  Italy,  and  every  Moorish 
town  had  its  schools  of  poetry  and  philosophy, 
Christian  Spain  was  cursed  with  a  chronic  plague 
of  mental  and  physical  famines.     With  every  pos- 
sible allowance  for  "unfortunate  contingencies," 
"revivals    of    barbarism,"    "misunderstood    doc- 
trines," etc.,  we  cannot  mistake  the  significance 
of  the  contrast.    "Bring  up  a  child  in  the  way  it 
should  go,  and  it  will  not  depart  therefrom."    And 
nations,  too,  are,  on  the  whole,  what  their  educa- 
tors make  them.     We  need  not  expect  that  Pusey's 
"heaven  sent  gospel  of  regeneration"  should  turn 
every  corner  of  earth  into  Eden;  but,  if  it  not 
only  failed  to  alleviate,  but  always  and  under  all 
circumstances  was  sure  to  aggravate,  the  misery, 
and  intensify  the  vices  of  every  converted  nation, 
we  can  have  no  difficulty  in  forming  an  opinion 
about  the  import  of  such  facts.    The  laziest  and 
sickliest  Sybarites  of  ancient  Italy  would  have  ex- 
ecrated the  systematic  health  ruin  of  the  Italian 
monks,  who  boasted  of  disease  and  forced  their 
disciples  to  treat  the  body  as  the  enemy  of  the 
soul.    The  Alexandrian  Platonists,  with  all  their 
penchant  for  gnostic  phantasms,  would  have  loathed 
that  mixture  of  superstition,  insanity,  and  disgust- 
ing sophistry  which  the  Alexandrian  clergy  dissem- 
inated as  a  divine  revelation.    The  warriors  of  the 
old  pagan  Northland,  with  all  their  martial  trucu- 
lence,  would  have  shuddered  at  the  mention  of  the 


60         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

inhumanities  which  their  children  perpetrated  at 
the  instigation  of  their  priests. 

The  first  Galilean  missionaries  came  in  Unita- 
rian and  optimistic  disguises.    Arius  Alexandrinus 
was  the  patron-saint  of  the  Visigoths,  the  Suevi, 
the  Vandals,  the  Celt-Iberians,  and  the  Burgun- 
dians.    But  moral  epidemics  can  rarely  be  confined 
to  their  incipient  stages,  and  there  is  a  curious 
analogy  between  mental  and  physical  poison  habits. 
Harmless  sweets  always  please.   There  is  no  reason 
why  an  octogenarian  should  not  relish  a  cupful  of 
strawberries  as  much  as  seventy  years  ago,  when 
he  picked  them  among  the  rocks  of  the  mountain 
glens.    Virgil's  Eclogues  never  lose  their  charm. 
But  the  votaries  of  an  unnatural  stimulant  must 
continually  increase  the  dose :  their  tonic  palls,  the 
jaded  nerves  demand  a  stronger  medium  of  stimu- 
lation.    The  alcohol-tippler  has  to  advance  from 
cider  to  brandy  and  rum.     The  opium-eater  gradu- 
ates from  laudanum  to  morphine.     The  victims  of 
mental  poison  habits,  too,  prove  that  their  vice  is 
progressive.     Visionaries   advance  from   hobgob- 
lins to  T)he  personal  devil.     Buddha   began  with 
the  deserts  of  Nepaul  and  ended  with  Nirvana. 
The  asceticism  of  the  Nazarenes  led  from  celibacy 
to  the  Cross.     All  southern  Arians  ended  by  be- 
coming   fanatical    Trinitarians    and    persecutors 
of  Arianism :  the  stronger  poison  prevailed ;  mod- 
erate absurdity  had  no  chance  against  absolute 
nonsense.     Their  missionary  zeal,  too,  increased. 
From  synods,  it  rose  to  riots,  to  heretic-hunts,  to 
Jew-massacres,  to  civil  wars,  to  international  wars, 
and  culminated  in  the  inter-continental  warfare  of 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  EUROPE.        61 

the  Crusades.  Intolerance  advanced  from  excom- 
munications to  excoriations,  from  the  burning  of 
heretical  books  to  the  burning  of  heretics.  ^ 

The  progressiveness  of  every  poison  habit  bears 
an  exact  proportion  to  the  virulence  of  the  poison. 
Johnsonian  tea-drinkers  are  phenomenal.    For  one 
man  who  drinks  coffee  to  an  absurd  excess,  we 
shall  find  a  thousand  who  swill  wine  or  lager  beer. 
The  nature-worshipping  Greeks  repeated  the  harm- 
less myths  and  practised  the  merry  rites  of  their 
creed  for  centuries  without  troubling  themselves 
about  the  myths  and    rites  of    their  neighbors. 
Their  superstition  differed  from  that  of  the  Church 
as  the  inspired  love  of  nature  differs  from  the 
ecstatic  fury  of  her  enemies,  as  the  day-dream  of 
a  happy  child  differs  from  the  fever-dream  of  a 
gloomy  fanatic.     " Procul  profani!"    was  the  cry 
of  the  Eleusinian  priests.     They  had  more  follow- 
ers than  they  wanted.     Their    joy-loving   creed 
could  dispense  with  autos-da-fe'.     The   Hebrews, 
in  stress  of  famine,  conquered  a  little  strip  of  ter- 
ritory between  Arabia  and  the  Syrian  desert,  and 
then  tried  their  best  to  live  in  peace  with  heaven 
and  earth,  and  their  sects  contented  themselves 
with  metaphorical    rib-roastings.     The   Saracens 
spread  their  conquests  from  Spain  to  the  Ganges, 
but  their  wars  had  a  physical  rather  than  meta- 
physical purpose.     They  needed  land,  and  made  a 
better  use  of  it  than  the  former  occupants.    They 
contented  themselves  with  assessing  dissenters,  and 
did  not  think  it  necessary  to  assassinate  them. 
But  the  Galilean  pessimists  could  not  afford  to  tol- 
erate an  unconverted  neighbor.    To  the  enemies 


b2      the  secret  of  the  east. 

of  nature,  the  happiness  of  an  earth-loving,  garden- 
planting,  and  science-promoting  nation  was  an  in- 
tolerable offence:  reason  had  to  be  sacrificed  to 
faith,  health  and  happiness  to  the  cross,  and  earth 
to  heaven.  Their  conquests  were  generally  unself- 
ish: they  did  not  care  for  the  lands  of  heathen- 
dom, they  merely  felt  it  their  duty  to  suppress  the 
impious  prosperity  of  those  who  cultivated  them. 
The  Spanish  Christians  did  not  annex  the  property 
of  their  Moorish  neighbors :  they  merely  destroyed 
it.  They  did  not  covet  the  gardens  of  Andalusia : 
they  merely  wanted  to  extend  the  deserts  of 
Aragon.  "How  hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches 
enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  It  was  the  duty 
of  a  pious  pauper  to  relieve  his  neighbors  of  such 
religious  disabilities.  "Blessed  are  they  that  mourn, 
for  they  shall  be  comforted.''  It  was  the  duty  of 
a  pious  pessimist  to  enlarge  that  basis  of  spirit- 
ual hopes.  Year  after  year,  Charlemagne  left  his 
Rhineland  palace  to  ravage  the  villages  of  the 
pagan  Saxons,  who  betrayed  an  undue  fondness 
for  bear-hunts  and  field-sports,  when  they  ought  to 
have  been  at  church,  bemoaning  their  sins.  When 
they  declined  to  slave  for  his  abbots  and  surrender 
their  children  to  a  band  of  gloomy  fanatics  with 
their  unnatural  dogmas  and  secret  vices,  he  en- 
deavored to  cure  their  stiffneckedness  by  behead- 
ing as  many  as  he  could  catch.  For  a  century  and 
a  half,  the  Spanish  Unitarians  were  burned  at  the 
rate  of  two  hundred  a  year.  Jews  and  Moors 
were  almost  the  only  industrial  inhabitants  of  the 
peninsula :  their  expulsion  would  paralyze  agricult- 
ure, manufactures,    science,    commerce,  and   me- 


V 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  EUROPE.        63 

chanical  arts ;  but  such  trifles  could  not  be  allowed 
to  outweigh  the  ghostly  interests  of  the  natives, 
and,  at  the  expense  of  the  national  credit,  and  the 
irretrievable  loss  of  national  prestige,  the  subjects 
of  the  Most  Christian  Monarch  were  reduced  to  a 
proper  state  of  financial  and  spiritual  poverty. 
Between  the  outbreak  of  the  first  crusade  and  the 
final  expulsion  of  the  Andalusian  Moors,  more  than 
fourteen  million  human  lives  were  sacrificed  to  the 
propaganda  of  pessimism,  and  for  seven  centuries 
the  neighbors  of  Christianized  Europe  were  exposed 
to  the  almost  continual  horrors  of  a  moral  opium 
war. 

The  monody  of  Libanius*  was  the  dirge  of 
pagan  civilization.  As  soon  as  the  light  of  philos- 
ophy had  faded,  the  vampires  of  the  Galilean 
church  became  aggressive,  and  for  the  next  thou- 
sand years  the  moral  history  of  Europe  is  the 
history  of  an  unremitting  war  against  Nature,  a 
war  which  systematically  promoted  the  survival  of 
the  unfit  by  making  manliness  a  stigma  and  com- 
mon sense  a  capital  crime.  It  is  this  anti-natural- 
ism that  makes  the  study  of  mediaeval  history  such 
a  sickening  task.  The  moral  atmosphere  of  the 
old  pagan  republics,  even  after  the  star  of  their 
fortune  had  declined,  is  pervaded  by  a  spirit  of 
mental  and  physical  health ;  while  the  air  of  the 
Christian  Middle  Ages  reeks  with  the  miasma 
of  misery  and  superstition. 

Between  the  morning-light  of  pagan  philosophy 
and  the  evening-light  of  modern  science  inter- 
vened a  thousand  years'  eclipse  of  human  reason, 
*  On  the  death  of  the  Emperor  Julian,  363. 


64         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

a  millennium  of  madness  and  misery  which  but  for 
that  unnatural  night  might  have  been  the  happiest 
period  in  the  history  of  mankind.  The  rule  of  the 
Cross  robbed  the  Germanic  nations  of  the  spring- 
time of  their  national  development.  When  they 
awakened  from  the  morning-slumber  of  their 
political  infancy,  they  found  themselves  in  the 
coils  of  a  strangling  hydra ;  and  the  prime  of  their 
strength,  which  might  have  won  them  the  golden 
prizes  of  the  international  arena,  had  to  be  wasted 
in  the  struggle  against  the  slimy  monster  that 
threatened  to  crush  out  their  reason  and  their  life. 
In  that  struggle  for  life  and  light,  the  Hercules  of 
the  North  finally  prevailed ;  but  the  Apollo  of  the 
South  succumbed  to  the  Python :  the  Mediter- 
ranean Paradise  was  forever  lost.  Here  and  there, 
the  worshippers  of  the  Light-god  still  wreathed 
his  altars  in  happy  ignorance  of  the  impending 
change;  but  the  shadows  of  Nirvana  gathered 
fast,  and  fifty  years  after  the  death  of  Julian  the 
day  of  the  Juventus  Mundi  had  faded  into  the 
night  of  the  Middle  Ages.  There,  the  fragrance  of 
a  sunlit  mountain-forest,  resounding  with  the  hun- 
ter's shout  and  the  jubilee  of  happy  children; 
here,  the  fumes  and  the  groans  of  a  Buddhistic 
opium-den. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  NIGHT   OP   THE   MIDDLE   AGES. 

"Your  prayer  for  light  shall  be  answered,  if  you  consent 
to  open  your  eyes."—  O.  E.  Lessing. 

Since  the  dawn  of  modern  rationalism,  the  path 
of  social  reform  has  been  obstructed  by  a  Sphinx 
that  still  propounds  her  riddle  to  every  philosopher, 
to  every  moralist,  to  every  speculative  historian. 
That  Sphinx  is  the  Christian  religion;  and  the 
riddle,  which  has  to  be  solved  before  we  can  clear 
the  road  of  progress,  is  the  enigma  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

Whence  that  dreadful  night  that  followed  sud- 
denly and  unnaturally  upon  the  bright  sunrise  of 
pagan  civilization?  that  long  eclipse  of  reason, 
science,  freedom,  and  happiness,  that  trance-like 
lethargy  of  the  very  nations  which  before  and  after 
gave  the  most  decided  proofs  of  their  capacity  for 
mental  progress  ?  What  turned  their  health  into 
a  thousand  years'  disease  ?  Was  it  the  influence  of 
a  supernatural  religion?  Then,  how  did  the  fol- 
lowers of  other  supernatural  creeds  happen  to 
escape  that  doom  ?  For  we  should  not  forget  that 
the  morning-hour  of  our  prosperous  Age  of  Rea- 
son is  but  a  moment  compared  with  the  long  cen- 
turies of  health  and  prosperity  which  the  Greeks, 
the  Spanish  Moors,  and  the  Eastern  Saracens  con- 
trived to  combine  with  a  firm  belief  in  the  reality 
of  supernatural  agencies. 


66  THE   SECRET   OF   THE   EAST. 

It  would  have  been  well  for  the  nations  of  Eu- 
rope, if  their  priests  had  contented  themselves  with 
the  inculcation  of  such  beliefs.  The  misery  of  the 
Middle  Ages  was  due  not  to  the  supernatural,  but 
to  the  anti-natural,  tendency  of  the  Christian  relig- 
ion. According  to  the  gospel  of  the  Galilean 
Buddhists,  earth,  with  all  its  joys  and  desires,  with 
all  its  visible  and  invisible  habitants,  is  wholly 
evil ;  the  renunciation  of  temporal  blessings  is  the 
first  condition  of  eternal  welfare,  and  death  the 
only  gate  of  true  life.  The  Christians  did  not 
deny  the  existence  of  the  pagan  deities :  they  merely 
changed  them  into  devils.  The  pagan  Pantheon 
became  a  pandemonium.  Rivers,  woods,  and  moun- 
tains swarmed,  not  with  harmless  nymphs  and 
dryads,  but  with  tempting  demons,  emissaries  of 
the  brimstone-pit  who  devoted  their  superhuman 
powers  to  the  seduction  and  affliction  of  Adam's 
progeny  *  The  gods  and  saints  of  Greece,  Rome, 
and  Palestine,  descended  from  heaven  to  share  the 
earthly  joys  of  mortals,  to  bless  and  hallow  the 
scenes  of  their  earthly  struggles  and  triumphs. 
The  saints  of  Buddhism  and  Christianity  visited 
earth  to  mar  its  joys,  to  depreciate  its  blessings,  to 
wean  its  children  from  their  natural  instincts  and 
sympathies.    Has  the  worship  of  sorrow  ever  failed 

*The  belief  in  fairies  was  of  Druidic  origin,  and  was 
either  suppressed  or  characteristically  metamorphosed  by 
the  Church,  who,  true  to  her  pessimistic  principles,  diabo- 
lized  the  Celtic  and  German  as  well  as  the  Grecian  dei- 
ties. Wodan,  the  hunter-god,  became  a  Wild  Huntsman; 
Hulda,  a  night-hag,  the  first  May  night,  when  Hertha 
awakens  the  slumbering  wood-spirits,  a  Walpurgis-Nacht 
with  its  hellish  revivals.  Even  objects  of  scenic  interest, 
the  trysting-places  of  the  nature-worshipping  Druids,  be- 
came "devils'  pulpits,"  "devils'  bridges,"  "devils'  castles." 


THE   NIGHT   OF    THE   MIDDLE   AGES.  67 

to  darken  the  light  of  nature  ?  Has  it  added  one 
millet-seed  to  the  sum  of  earthly  happiness  ?  Did 
the  Apostle  of  Galilee  ever  speak  one  word  in  favor 
of  industry,  rational  education,  the  love  and  study 
of  nature,  physical  and  intellectual  culture  ?  Not 
one.  Has  his  mission  promoted  our  progress  in 
the  paths  of  science  and  freedom?  Not  one  step. 
His  doctrine  in  all  its  tendencies  is  wholly  un- 
earthly, and  therefore  wholly  unavailable  for  secu- 
lar purposes. 

The  pagan  gods  were  the  deified  powers  of  Nat- 
ure, the  patrons  of  mariners,  shepherds,  and  hus- 
bandmen. The  Christian  gods  were  the  deified 
enemies  of  Nature.  Even  the  Christian  Deus 
Maximus  frowned  on  earthly  pleasures,  and  could 
be  propitiated  only  by  the  mortification  of  almost 
every  natural  instinct :  the  bounteous  All-father 
had  become  an  All-tormentor,  a  celestial  grand- 
inquisitor,  who  demanded  an  implicit  submission 
of  human  reason  to  inhuman  dogmas,  and  doomed 
the  vast  plurality  of  his  creatures  to  the  tortures 
of  an  everlasting  auto-da-fe. 

In  the  instinct  of  freedom,  in  the  love  of  knowl- 
edge, aud  the  sense  of  beauty,  the  Christian  mor- 
alists, like  the  pagan  philosophers,  recognized  the 
power  of  a  mysterious  inspiration,  but  with  this 
difference,  that  the  pagans  ascribed  that  inspira- 
tion to  the  favor  of  a  beneficent  god,  the  Christians 
to  the  wiles  of  a  tempting  fiend.  More  than  fifty 
generations  of  our  Christian  ancestors  were  taught 
to  neglect  the  health  laws  of  nature  as  unworthy 
the  attention  of  a  candidate  for  the  higher  blessings 
of  the  world  to  come.     Every  opposition  to  the 


00         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

tyranny  of  the  secular  or  spiritual  authorities  was 
punished  as  a  revolt  against  the  authority  of  a 
creed  which  inculcated  the  duty  of  passive  submis- 
sion to  injustice.  The  Holy  Alliance  of  Church  and 
State  disdained  to  recognize  the  natural  rights  of 
men  whose  natural  instincts  were  supposed  to  be 
wholly  evil.  In  every  progress  of  natural  science, 
the  guardians  of  an  anti-natural  creed  scented  a 
danger  to  the  prerogatives  of  the  holy  brother- 
hood. Every  philosopher,  every  mathematician, 
every  naturalist,  had  to  keep  the  secret  of  his  dis- 
coveries, if  he  wished  to  keep  his  head.  The  night 
of  the  Middle  Ages  was  not  the  natural  blindness 
of  unenlightened  barbarians,  but  an  unnatural 
darkness,  maintained  by  an  elaborate  system  of 
spiritual  despotism,  and  in  spite  of  the  fierce  strug- 
gles of  many  light-loving  nations. 

In  the  French  province  of  Languedoc  alone,  the 
man-hunters  of  the  Holy  Inquisition  spilled  more 
human  blood  than  ever  reddened  the  sand  of  the 
Roman  arena.  "But  the  gladiators  died  to  min- 
ister to  a  frivolous  popular  amusement,"  says  the 
Jesuitical  apologist,  "while  the  mediaeval  heretics 
were  sacrificed  to  the  interests  of  our  revealed 
faith."  A  faith  which  would  undoubtedly  tempt 
you  to  renew  the  butcheries  of  your  predecessors, 
if  you  could  regain  their  power;  but,  after  its 
doctrines  have  been  recognized  as  a  mixture  of 
God-insulting  idolatries,  nature-insulting  precepts, 
and  reason-insulting  superstitions,  what  remains 
to  compensate  the  world  for  the  lives  of  the  twenty- 
five  hundred  thousand  martyrs  of  reason  and  free- 
dom whose  murder  has  undoubtedly  debased  the 


THE   NIGHT   OF   THE   MIDDLE   AGES.  69 

mental  type  of  the  human  race?  Will  sophistry 
dare  to  mention  the  elements  of  natural  morality 
which  are  common  to  all  religions,  but  which  the 
anti-natural  dogmas  of  Christianity  crowded  into 
the  background  ?  Has  religion  gained  by  its  asso- 
ciation with  the  doctrines  of  a  Church  that  made 
it  a  synonyme  of  all  that  is  odious  and  absurd  ? 
Has  the  rule  of  that  Church  furthered  the  moral 
progress  of  the  forty  generations  whose  wisest, 
manliest,  noblest,  and  bravest  men  were  systemati- 
cally weeded  out,  to  enforce  the  survival  of  idiots 
and  hypocrites?  For  thirteen  centuries,  the  rack, 
the  stake,  and  the  cross  were  leagued  against  nat- 
ure and  mankind. 

It  is  true  that  here  and  there  the  genius  of  Hu- 
manity triumphed  over  its  enemies  ;  it  is  true  that 
the  Christian  obscurantists  could  not  entirely  sup- 
press the  mental  activity  of  the  Caucasian  race; 
but  it  is  equally  true  that  their  labors  to  suppress 
the  fruits  of  that  activity  were  successful  enough 
to  retard  the  progress  of  mankind  for  nearly  four- 
teen hundred  years. 

I  am  not  disposed  to  deny  the  merits  of  the 
amiable  inconsistencies  of  several  Christian  sects, 
such  as  the  republican  enthusiasm  of  the  English 
Puritans,  who  found  it  convenient  to  forget  the 
duty  of  passive  submission  to  injustice ;  or  the  tol- 
erance of  several  Catholic  pontiffs  in  their  zeal  for 
the  revival  of  pagan  arts  and  sciences, — the  same 
arts  and  sciences  which  their  predecessors  had 
labored  to  suppress ;  or  the  promotion  of  the 
cause  of  temperance  by  Protestant  clergymen,  who 
have  at  last  awakened  to  a  recognition  of  the  fact 


70         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

that  a  man  can  be  denied  by  things  that  enter  his 
mouth,  and  that  the  magician  of  Canaan  set  a 
bad  example  by  turning  drinking  water  into  wine. 
I  do  not  deny  that  some  of  the  worst  Christian 
hierarchies  have  done  some  good,  in  spite  of  their 
creed;  but  I  maintain  that,  just  as  far  as  they 
have  tried  to  conform  to  the  precepts  of  that  creed, 
they  have  proved  themselves  the  worst  enemies  of 
mankind. 

"What  I"  cries  my  theological  friend,  "enemies  of 
mankind?  Have  they  deserved  that  epithet  by 
their  unselfish  zeal  in  propagating  a  religion  which 
inculcates  such  precepts  as  the  duty  of  universal 
love?" 

And  I  reply  :  Yes,  in  just  as  far  as  they  acted  in 
the  antinatural  spirit  of  that  religion.  For  how 
did  it  teach  them  to  prove  their  "love"  ?  By  mak- 
ing earth  more  lovely  ?  By  making  life  more  worth 
living?  By  increasing  the  creature  comforts  of 
their  fellow-men?  By  teaching  them  to  observe 
the  health  laws  of  God,  to  recognize  the  principles 
of  rational  education,  the  conditions  of  social 
progress?  Not  if  they  could  help  it.  Whatever 
is  natural  is  wrong,  was  the  foundation  dogma  of 
their  creed;  and  true  believers  tried  to  promote 
the  welfare  of  their  fellow-men  by  suppressing 
their  freedom  in  the  interests  of  "Christian  disci- 
pline," their  reason  in  the  interests  of  "Christian 
revelation" ;  by  burning  their  bodies  for  the  bene- 
fit of  their  souls,  and  by  imprisoning  their  chil- 
dren in  convents,  where  tyranny  and  superstition 
conspired  for  the  suppression  of  every  natural  in- 
stinct. 


THE   NIGHT   OF   THE   MIDDLE   AGES.  71 

The  Arabs  have  a  tradition  that  a  roving  Bed- 
ouin once  discovered  the  earthly  paradise,  and  was 
so  haunted  by  the  memory  of  its  scenes  and  bird 
songs  that  he  found  the  dreariness  of  his  native 
deserts  unendurable,  and  wandered  to  the  seashore 
and  drowned  himself.  And,  if  a  resuscitated 
Roman  could  see  what  the  rule  of  the  Cross  has 
made  of  his  birthland,  he,  too,  would  probably 
take  refuge  with  Charybdis  rather  than  endure 
the  hideous  sight.  The  paradise  of  Southern  Eu- 
rope could  not  be  at  once  spoiled.  Traces  of  the 
old  nature  worship  still  lingered  here  and  there. 
The  Apennines  still  sheltered  the  remnants  of  the 
sacred  groves.  A  few  mountain  tribes  still  kept 
the  foe  at  bay,  and  relied  on  the  strength  of  their 
sinews  rather  than  on  prayers  and  miracles.  But 
the  efforts  of  the  spoilers  did  not  cease;  and  it 
may  be  doubted  if  the  Caucasian  race  will  ever 
wholly  recover  from  the  effects  of  a  thousand 
years'  attempt  to  lure  their  children  from  earth 
to  ghostland,  to  poison  their  minds  with  the  dog- 
mas of  pessimism,  to  sacrifice  the  pagan  Elysium 
to  the  Buddhistic  Nirvana.  How  is  it  that  "cli- 
matic influences"  have  not  sapped  the  physical 
vigor  of  the  Arabs,  the  Jews,  the  Berbers,  the  Per- 
sians, the  East-Indian  Mohammedans  ?  Only  anti- 
natural  religions  have  achieved  that  deep  abase- 
ment of  the  physical  type  of  our  race  which  we 
see  in  China  and  Southern  Europe.  For  we  should 
not  forget  that  the  nations  of  Northern  Europe 
saved  themselves  by  the  revolt  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation,  before  the  poison  of  pessimism  had 
sapped  their  strength.     The  gods  of  Greece  were 


72         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

the  deified  powers  of  Nature;  Olympus  was  an 
earthly  mountain ;  the  immortals  were  worshipped 
with  songs  and  dances,  and  did  not  oblige  their 
votaries  to  sacrifice  their  reason  and  their  freedom. 
The  doctrines  of  anti-naturalism,  diabolism,  and 
eternal  punishment,  were  unknown  to  the  expo- 
nents of  the  Mosaic  dispensation.  Nay,  with  the 
exception  of  that  doubtful  passage  in  Job,  the 
Old  Testament  contains  not  a  line,  not  a  single 
word,  that  could  be  fairly  construed  into  an  allu- 
sion to  the  doctrine  of  a  future  existence.  Its 
God  rewards  his  servants  with  temporal  blessings, 
its  retributions  are  earthly  retributions,  its  para- 
dise bloomed  on  this  side  of  the  grave.  The  na- 
tions of  Islam  believed  in  a  supernatural  paradise ; 
but  its  gates  had  to  be  won  by  valiant  deeds,  by 
wisdom  and  temperance,  and  not  by  whining  self- 
abasement  and  the  contempt  of  bodily  health. 
But  the  dogmas  of  the  Galilean  Church  were 
wholly  anti-natural,  and,  in  their  strict  accepta- 
tion, necessarily  conducive  to  mental  and  physical 
bankruptcy. 

When  the  sceptre  of  Rome  passed  into  the  hands 
of  the  victorious  Goths,  Western  Europe  and  the 
Mediterranean  peninsulas  were  still  in  the  prime  of 
their  fertility.  Climate,  soil,  scenic  grandeur,  natu- 
ral facilities  of  communication,  the  happiest  pro- 
portion of  cultivated  fields  and  forest  lands, — all 
contributed  to  make  them  the  most  favored  regions 
of  the  Eastern  Continent ;  and  we  should  remem- 
ber that  the  nations  who  inherited  them  were,  in 
natural  capacities,  immeasurably  superior  to  the 
best  Arabian  tribes.    Among  the  sad  "It  might 


THE   NIGHT   OF   THE   MIDDLE   AGES.  73 

have  beens"  of  the  world's  history,  the  saddest  is 
the  reflection  what  those  countries  might  have 
become,  if  the  noble  Visigoths,  the  heroic  Longo- 
bards,  and  the  manful  Saxons  had  been  permitted 
to  ru]e  them,  under  the  influence  of  a  moderately 
rational  religion,  like  that  of  Islam.  The  golden 
age  of  Hellas  would  have  been  eclipsed  by  nations 
who  (as  they  proved,  as  soon  as  they  could  rid 
themselves  of  the  Galilean  incubus)  combined 
the  intellectual  faculties  of  the  Greeks  with  a 
warmer  love  of  nature  and  a  prouder  love  of  per- 
sonal  independence. 

At  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  ene- 
mies of  nature  had  reached  the  zenith  of  their 
power;  and,  at  that  time,  it  may  be  said  that, 
without  a  single  exception,  the  countries  of  Christian 
Europe  were  worse  governed,  more  ignorant,  more 
superstitious,  poorer,  and  unhappier  than  the  worst 
governed  province  of  pagan  Rome  *    The  "scion 

*< 'Feudalism,"  says  Blanqui,  "was  a  concentration  of  sJl 
scourees.  The  peasant,  stripped  of  the  inheritance  of  his 
father?,  became  the  property  of  ignorant,  inflexible,  indo- 
lent masters:  he  was" obliged  to  travel  fifty ^agues^ with 
their  carts,  whenever  they  required  it;  he  labored  for  them 
three  days  in  the  week,  and  surrendered  to  them  half  the 
Product  of  his  earnings  during  the  other  three;  without 
?heir  consent  he  conld  not  change  his  residence  or  marry. 
And  why,  indeed,  should  he.  wish  to  marry,  if  he  conld 
^•arcelv  save  enough  to  maintain  himself?  The  Abbot 
AlcSn  had  twenty  thousand  slaves,  called  serfs,  who  were 
forever  attached  to  the  soil.  This  is  the  great  cause  of  the 
rS  depopulation  observed  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  of 
the  prodigious  multitude  of  monasteries  which  sprang  up 
on  every  sYde.  It  was  doubtless  a  relief  to  such  miserable 
men  to  find  in  the  cloisters  a  retreat  from  oppression ;  but 
Se  humao  race  never  suffered  a  more  cruel  outrage,  indus- 
try never  received  a  wound  better  calculated  to  plunge  the 
wJrld  again  into  the  darkness -of  the  rudest  antiquity.  It 
Suffices  to  say  that  the  prediction  of  the  approaching  end 
of  thfworfdf  industriously  spread  by  the  rapacious  monks 

at  this  time,  was  received  without  terror."-Besume  de 

VHistoire  du  Commerce,  p.  156. 


74 


THE   SECRET   OF   THE   EAST. 


of  the  Buddhistic  parent  tree"  had  begun  to  bear 
fruit  after  its  kind.  The  sway  of  the  Cross  ex- 
tended from  the  Baltic  to  the  Hellespont ;  the  em- 
pire of  the  Church  embraced  every  variety-  of 
European  climate,  it  embraced  Greek,  Latin,  Ger- 
man, Slavic,  and  Celtic  nations, — nations  which  it 
had  received  in  every  stage  of  civilization,  semi- 
civilization,  and  barbarism,  but  whom  the  poison 
of  its  dogmas  had  affected  with  a  uniform  result  * 
Wherever  we  look,  darkness,  slavery,  and  misery ; 
bigoted  tyrants  and  brutalized  serfs,  neglected 
fields,  blighted  cities,  perverted  sciences,  and  par- 
alyzed industries;  hordes  of  self-torturing  mani- 
acs frenzying  the  populace  with  their  threats 
and  prophecies ;  international  man-hunts,  religious 
massacres,  witchcraft  riots,  and  a  merciless  war 
against  every  form  of  mental  and  social  independ- 
ence. Peasants  were  treated  like  beasts  of  burden. 
If  earthly  pleasure  was  sinful  and  heaven  our  proper 
home,  Herr  Baron  and  Monsieur  l'Abbe  saw  no 
reason  to  provide  creature  comforts  for  their  serfs. 

♦Protestant  Jesuits  have  tried  to  ascribe  the  cause  of 
that  result  to  the  pagan  admixtures  of  the  Catholic  creed. 
The  seasons  and  rites  of  many  Catholic  holidays,  they  say, 
correspond  to  those  of  old  Roman. festivals;  the  most  pop- 
ular saints  of  the  Catholic  calendar  were  pagan  demigods 
in  disguise;  the  legends  of  the  early  Church  were  cor- 
rupted with  interpolations  of  Roman  and  Grecian  myths. 
Corrupted  forsooth  !  The  humanizing  and  naturalizing 
influence  of  pagan  traditions  alone  saved  the  victims  of 
the  Galilean  Church  from  mental  inanition  in  the  desert 
of  asceticism :  they  were  reduced  to  the  alternative  of  the 
prince  in  Grimm's  folk-sagas,  who  had  to  wed  a  peasant 
girl  or  a  grinniug  death's-head.  For  analogous  reasons, 
the  English  Puritans  had  to  popularize  their  ghastly  creed 
with  an  infusion  of  Hebrew  elements :  the  names  of  their 
warlike  saints,  the  shibboleths  of  their  peculiar  cant,  the 
favorite  texts  of  their  field  preachers,  were  nearly  always 
borrowed  from  the  Old  Testament.  But  such  palliatives 
served  only  to  disguise  the  doctrine  of  pessimism,  as 
poison-mongers  administer  their  potions  with  pleasant 
condiments. 


THE   NIGHT    OF    THE   MIDDLE    AGES.  75 

"One  sees  certain  dark,  livid,  naked,  sunburnt 
wild  animals,  male  and  female,  scattered  over  the 
country  and  attached  to  the  soil,  which  they  root 
and  turn  over  with  indomitable  perseverance. 
They  have,  as  it  were,  an  articulate  voice;  and, 
when  they  rise  to  their  feet,  they  show  a  human 
face.  They  are,  in  fact,  men :  they  creep  at  night 
into  dens,  where  they  live  on  black  bread,  water, 
and  roots.  They  spare  other  men  the  labor  of 
ploughing,  sowing,  and  harvesting,  and,  therefore, 
deserve  some  small  share  of  the  bread  they  have 
grown.  Yet  they  were  the  fortunate  peasants, — 
those  who  had  work  and  bread,— and  they  were 
then  the  few"  (while  two  thirds  of  the  arable  terri- 
tory of  France  were  in  the  hands  of  the  Church).* 

If  truth  was  communicated  from  heaven  by  di- 
rect revelation,  if  diseases,  famines,  and  droughts 
could  be  averted  by  prayer,  why  should  men  waste 
their  time  on  science?  "A  cloud  of  ignorance," 
says  Hallam,  "overspread  the  whole  face  of  the 
Church,  hardly  broken  by  a  few  glimmering  lights 
who  owe  almost  the  whole  of  their  distinction  to 
the  surrounding  darkness.  ...  I  cannot  conceive 
of  any  state  of  society  more  adverse  to  the  intel- 
lectual improvement  of  mankind  than  one  which 
admitted  no  middle  line  between  dissoluteness  and 

fanatical  mortifications No  original  writer  of 

any  merit  arose  ;  and  learning  may  be  said  to  have 
languished  in  a  region  of  twilight  for  the  greater 
part  of  a  thousand  years.  ...  In  992,  it  was  as- 
serted that  scarcely  a  single  person  was  to  be 

*La  Bruyere.    Quoted  in  P.  L.  Courier's  Petition  A  la 
Chambre  des  Deputes,  p.  19. 


76         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

found,  in  Rome  itself,  who  knew  the  first  elements 
of  letters.  Not  one  priest  of  a  thousand  in  Spain, 
about  the  age  of  Charlemagne,  could  address  a 
common  letter  of  salutation  to  another."  The 
history  of  every  mediaeval  philosopher,  discoverer, 
or  reformer  is  the  history  of  a  life-long  struggle 
against  the  tyranny  of  a  light-hating  alliance  of 
despots  and  bigots.  • 

The  doctrine  of  "renunciation"  made  patriotism 
an  idle  dream  :  the  saints  whose  "kingdom  was 
not  of  this  world"  had  no  business  with  vanities  of 
that  sort;  no  chieftain  could  trust  his  neighbors; 
cities  were  pitted  against  cities,  and  castles  against 
castles ;  patriotic  reformers  would  vainly  have  ap- 
pealed to  the  sympathies  of  men  who  had  been 
taught  to  reserve  their  interest  for  the  politics  of 
the  New  Jerusalem. 

And  what  an  age  for  the  lovers  of  truth  I  Where 
should  they  take  refuge  from  their  enemies,  when 
every  year  the  blood  of  free  thinkers  was  poured 
out  like  water  ?  Where  should  they  quench  their 
thirst  after  knowledge?  Among  the  Arabs,  who 
would  slay  them  as  spies?  In  cities,  where  the 
next  neighbor  would  betray  them  to  the  spies  of 
the  Holy  Inquisition  ?  In  convents,  in  the  strong- 
holds of  pessimism,  where,  year  after  year,  they 
had  to 

"Erwachen  mit  Entsetzen  Morgens  auf, 

Den  Tag  zu  sehen,  der  in  seinem  Lauf 

Nicht  einen  Wunsch  gewahren  wird,  nicht  einenl" 

—Awake  with  horror  every  morning, 

To  see  the  day  which  in  its  course  will  not 

Grant  the  fulfilment  of  a  single  wish !— 


THE  NIGHT  OF   THE   MIDDLE  AGES.  77 

But  the  deepest  shade  of  the  dreadful  night 
darkened  the  path  of  natural  religion.  To  him 
who  seeks  to  know  the  will  of  the  All-father  by 
studying  the  laws  of  his  universe,  and  honors  his 
wisdom  and  beneficence  by  ordering  his  life  in 
conformity  with  those  laws,  it  must  indeed  have 
appeared  as  if  our  earth  had  been  abandoned  to 
the  powers  of  darkness.  For  what  fiends  could 
have  insulted  the  name  of  the  Creator  by  grosser 
blasphemies  than  the  maniacs  who  ascribed  to  him 
acts  of  such  monstrous  cruelty  that  the  inhumani- 
ties of  the  worst  earthly  despots  appeared  mild  in 
comparison,  and  who  hoped  to  gain  his  favor  by 
turning  his  paradise  into  a  desert,  by  rejecting  his 
gifts,  by  renouncing  the  blessings  of  his  marvellous 
earth,  and  by  sacrificing  their  freedom,  their 
health,  and  their  reason ! 

A  year  after  the  death  of  the  prophetess  Sos- 
pitra,  says  the  pagan  historian,  Eunapius,  her  son 
was  one  day  standing  before  the  temple  of  Serapis, 
when  the  prophetic  spirit  of  his  mother  fell  upon 
him.  "Woe  be  our  children  !"  he  exclaimed,  when 
he  awakened  from  his  trance.  "I  see  a  cloud  ap- 
proaching: a  great  darkness  will  fall  upon  the 
human  race." 

That  cloud  did  not  come  from  Olympus  or  Sinai. 
The  spectre  of  an  earth-blighting  disease  stalked 
through  the  land ;  and  the  time  will  come  when, 
in  the  form  of  that  spectre,  all  but  the  wilfully 
blind  will  recognize  not  the  manful  monotheism 
of  Moses,  not  the  mythology  of  the  nature-loving 
Greeks,  but  the  nature-hating  pessimism  of  Buddha 
Sakyamuni. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

AN   EXPENSIVE   CREED. 

"Insani  fugiunt  mundum,  immundumque  sequuntur."— 
Jordan  Bruno. 

The  most  cherished  dogma  of  the  modern  Jesuit 
is  the  belief  that  the  conditions  of  our  earthly 
happiness  are  influenced  by  the  continual  interfer- 
ence of  preternatural  agencies ;  for  he  has  to  pos- 
tulate a  continued  miracle  to  explain  the  fact  that 
the  creed,  which  he  calls  the  best  of  all  possible 
religions,  has  been  a  constant  source  of  misery  and 
error.  But,  if  the  true  reason  of  that  fact  has  once 
been  named,  its  concordance  with  the  historical 
records  of  the  last  sixteen  centuries  will  be  a 
sufficient  vindication  of  its  correctness;  for  the 
consistency  of  theory  and  experience  may  reach  a 
degree  that  can  defy  the  wiles  of  sophistry. 

From  the  first  council  of  Nice  to  the  last  con- 
ference of  the  "Evangelical  Alliance,"  the  history 
of  the  Galilean  Church  has  been  the  history  of  an 
unremitting  war  against  nature;  and  the  propa- 
ganda of  her  dogmas  could  prosper  only  at  the 
expense  of  our  earthly  happiness.  The  direct 
results  of  that  warfare  would  be  amply  sufficient 
to  account  for  the  fact  that  the  Age  of  Faith,  the 
era  when  the  rule  of  the  cross  maintained  its 
supremacy,  was  the  dreariest  period  in  the  history 
of  the  human  race;  but,  unhappily,  those  results 
were  not  confined  to  the  suppression  of  harmless 


AN  EXPENSIVE   CREED.  79 

amusements  and  scientific  investigations.     It  is 
easier  to  pervert  than  to  suppress  a  natural  instinct. 
Wherever  pessimism  crushed  the  flowers  of  this 
earth,  the  soil   began    to    teem  with    poisonous 
weeds.      The  suppression   of    healthful  pastimes 
begat  a  passion  for  vicious  pastimes,  and  made 
the  fancied  identity  of  sin  and  pleasure  a  sad 
reality.    The  Olympic  games  and  the  Capitoline 
festivals  were  abolished  by  the  order  of  a  Chris- 
tian emperor.    The  field-sports  of  the  Gaelic  peas- 
ants were    suppressed    by  the   influence    of    the 
Scotch  clergy.    The  worship  of  sorrow  spread  its 
gloom  over  every  emotion  of  the  human  heart. 
But,  when  the  Church  had  succeeded  in  making 
life  as  dismal  as  the  dogmas  of  her  creed,  her 
victims  took  refuge  in  secret  sins  and  drunken- 
ness.   Even  the  slaves  of  ancient  Rome  had  their 
saturnalia,  when  their  masters  indulged  them  in 
the  enjoyment  of  their  accumulated  arrears  of  hap- 
piness ;  but  our  laborers  toil  like  machines,  whose 
best  recreation  is  a  temporary  respite  of  work. 
Human  hearts,  however,  will  not  renounce  their 
birthright  to  happiness;  and,  if  joy  has  departed 
this  life,  they  pursue  its  shadow  into  the  land  of 
dreams,  and  try  to  spice  the  dry  bread  of  daily 
drudgery  with  the  sweets  of  delirium. 

The  attempt  to  suppress  the  pursuit  of  natural 
sciences  led  to  the  pursuit  of  pseudo-sciences,— -to 
supernaturalism,  demonism,  and  all  sorts  of  hid- 
eous chimeras.  The  attempt  to  suppress  the  wor- 
ship of  nature  led  to  the  worship  of  unnatural- 
ism,  the  veneration  of  a  whole  almanac  full  of 
nature-hating,  self-torturing  maniacs.    The  fanat- 


80         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

ical  asceticism  that  begat  callousness  to  personal 
sufferings  led  its  victims  to  behold  with  indiffer- 
ence, and  at  last  with  delight,  the  sufferings  of 
their  fellow-men.  The  cruelties  of  the  worst  pagan 
despots  were  surpassed  by  the  absolute  inhumanity 
of  pious  Christian  monks  and  priests.  The  sup- 
pression of  the  spirit  of  manful  emulation  that 
assembled  the  champions  of  the  Olympic  festivals 
forced  that  instinct  to  seek  its  gratification  in 
cunning  and  treachery,  in  the  sordid  competition 
of  hypocrites  and  sycophants.  The  suppression  of 
rational  freedom  led  to  anarchy,  to  communism 
and  nihilism.  The  ordinance  of  celibacy  became 
the  mother  of  secret  vices.  Intolerance  is  the 
parent  of  hypocrisy. 

Pessimism  has  been  on  trial  for  sixteen  hundred 
years;  and  the  history  of  the  Middle  Ages  has 
taught  us  that  man's  divorce  from  his  earthly 
instincts  is  the  removal  of  a  tree  from  its  native 
soil,  a  removal  from  the  basis  of  life.  For  sixteen 
centuries  of  faith  and  trust,  our  ancestors  tried  to 
reach  heaven  by  abandoning  their  place  in  nature ; 
and  we  can  now  estimate  the  costs  of  the  experi- 
ment. 

The  dogmas  of  the  Christian  Church  have  cost 
the  world  three  million  square  miles  of  lands, 
which  once  were  the  garden  spots  of  this  earth, 
but  which  have  been  turned  into  deserts  by  the 
neglect  of  rational  agriculture  and  the  influence  of 
a  creed  which  labored  to  withdraw  the  attention 
of  mankind  from  secular  to  post-mortem  concern- 
ments. "The  fairest  and  fruitfullest  provinces  of 
the  Roman  Empire,"  says  Prof.  Marsh, — "precisely 


AN  EXPENSIVE  CREED.  81 

that  portion  of  terrestrial  surface,  in  short,  which, 
about  the  commencement  of  the  Christian  era,  was 
endowed  with  the  greatest  superiority  of  soil,  cli- 
mate, and  position,  which  had  been  carried  to 
the  highest  pitch  of  physical  improvement, — is 
now  completely  exhausted  of  its  fertility.  A  ter- 
ritory larger  than  all  Europe,  the  abundance  of 
which  sustained  in  bygone  centuries  a  population 
scarcely  inferior  to  that  of  the  whole  Christian 
world  at  the  present  day,  has  been  entirely  with- 
drawn from  human  use,  or,  at  best,  is  thinly 
inhabited.  .  .  .  There  are  regions  where  the  opera- 
tion of  causes,  set  in  action  by  man,  has  brought 
the  face  of  the  earth  to  a  desolation  almost  as  com- 
plete as  that  of  the  moon;  and,  though  within  that 
brief  space  of  time  which  we  call  'the  historical 
period,'  they  are  known  to  have  been  covered  with 
luxuriant  woods,  verdant  pastures,  and  fertile 
meadows,  they  are  now  too  far  deteriorated  to  be 
reclaimable  by  man,  nor  can  they  become  again 
fitted  for  his  use  except  through  great  geological 
changes,  or  other  agencies,  over  which  we  have  no 
control.  .  .  .  Another  era  of  equal  improvidence 
would  reduce  this  earth  to  such  a  condition  of 
impoverished  productiveness  as  to  threaten  the 
depravation,  barbarism,  and,  perhaps,  even  the 
extinction  of  the  human  species."  (Man  and 
Nature,  pp.  4,  43.) 

And  the  ruin  of  these  countries*  is  not  due  to 
the  recklessness  and  intentional  destructiveness  of 

*Asia  Minor,  Turkey,  and  Northern  Africa  were  for 
centuries  inhabited  by  priest-ridden  Christians,  and  lost 
their  fertility  before  they  passed  under  the  sway  of  their 
present  master.  India,  Persia,  and  the  Caucasus,  and 
those  parts  of  Southern  Egypt  and  Eastern  Armenia  that 


82  THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

their  inhabitants,  but  is  the  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  a  persistent  attempt  to  follow  the  pre- 
cepts of  an  anti-natural  creed. 

Christianity  has  retarded  the  progress  of  the 
human  race  by  at  least  fifteen  hundred  years. 
The  fruits  of  science  and  social  reform,  which  our 
descendants  will  reap  in  fifteen  centuries  hence, 
might  be  enjoyed  at  the  present  moment,  if  the 
last  sixty  generations  had  not  wasted  their  time 
in  disputes  about  the  interpretation  of  idiotic 
dogmas,  and  the  attempt  to  gain  the  heaven  of  a 
future  world  by  despising  the  blessings  of  the 
present. 

On  the  altar  of  her  anti-natural  idol,  the  Chris- 
tian Church  has  sacrificed  the  lives  of  eighteen 
millions  of  the  noblest  and  bravest  of  our  fellow- 
men.  Two  millions  were  butchered  in  the  wars 
against  the  freedom-loving  children  of  nature,  the 
Saxons,  the  Sarmatians,  and  the  pagan  Scandina- 
vians ;  one  million,  in  the  wars  against  the  Arian 
heretics ;  at  least  five  millions,  in  the  seven  larger 
and  four  smaller  crusades.  The  extermination  of 
the  Spanish  Saracens  reduced  the  population  of 
the  peninsula  by  seven  millions.  One  million  was 
slaughtered  in  the  fifteen  years'  man-hunt  against 
the  Albigenses,  the  Thirty  Years'  War  against  the 
Protestant  princes,  the  massacres  of  the  French 
Huguenots,  the  Waldenses,  and  the  insurgents  of 
the  Netherlands.  A  full  million  human  lives  were 
devoured  by  the  Moloch  of  the  Holy  Inquisition 

were  never  under  Christian  control,  have  preserved  much 
of  their  ancient  fruitfulness.  The  so-called  Christian 
countries  of  Northern  Europe  were  not  converted  before 
the  eleventh  century  of  our  era,  and  revolted  in  time  to 
prevent  their  utter  ruin. 


AN  EXPENSIVE  CREED.  83 

and  the  witch  tribunals,  which  for  nearly  seven 
centuries  infested  all  the  principal  cities  of  Chris- 
tian Europe.  To  this  number,  we  might  add  the 
twelve  million  aborigines  of  the  New  World,  who 
in  less  than  a  century  fell  victims  to  the  insane 
fury  of  their  Christian  conquerors  and  the  unre- 
mitting persecutions  of  the  Christian  Inquisition. 
Many  of  the  Inquisitors  were  men  of  spotless 
personal  morality.  Montfort,  the  butcher  of  the 
Albigenses,  was  a  pious  and  righteous  cavalier. 
Jean  Bodin  and  Judge  Sprenger,  the  defender 
of  the  witch  tribunals,  sincerely  pitied  the  fate  of 
their  victims;  but  their  horrible  creed  left  them 
no  choice.  The  blood  of  thirty  millions  of  our 
fellow-men  cries  out  against  the  nature-hating 
fanatic  who  inculcated  the  belief  in  the  sinfulness 
of  our  natural  instincts,  the  guilt  of  scepticism, 
and  the  possibility  of  Satanic  incarnations. 

Christianity  has  turned  whole  nations  of  free- 
dom-loving men  into  slaves  and  flunkeys.  The 
precepts  of  self-abhorrence  and  passive  submission 
to  tyranny  and  injustice  was  a  direct  declaration 
of  war  against  the  manly  self-reliance  that  is  the 
basis  of  all  true  independence.  The  worst  tyranny 
that  has  ever  oppressed  the  children  of  this  earth 
was  perpetrated  in  the  name  of  the  Christian  God. 
When  Charlemagne  conquered  the  land  of  the 
pagan  Saxons,  thousands  of  brave  men  were  slain 
like  wild  beasts ;  thousands  were  transported  to  the 
slave-farms  of  the  Abbot  Alcuin  or  imprisoned  in 
Christian  convents;  hundreds  of  widows  and  be- 
reaved mothers  committed  suicide;  hundreds  of 
children  were  scourged  to  death  for  resisting  the 


84         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

tyranny  of  their  jailers  or  trying  to  regain  their 
liberty.  The  Spanish  Unitarians,  the  Jews  and 
Moriscoes,  the  most  industrious  inhabitants  of  the 
peninsula,  were  hunted  from  province  to  province ; 
and  when,  after  centuries  of  horrible  persecutions, 
a  remnant  of  the  fugitives  sought  a  refuge  in  Port- 
ugal, the  Christian  monarch  of  that  country  was 
forced  by  the  priests  to  break  his  promise  of  pro- 
tection: the  refugees  were  banished,  and  their 
children  dragged  away  to  the  slavery  of  the  Chris- 
tian convents.  "Piercing  shrieks  of  anguish  filled 
the  land:  women  were  known  to  fling  their 
children  into  deep  wells  or  to  tear  them  limb 
from  limb  rather  than  resign  them  to  the  Chris- 
tians." (Lecky's  History  of  Rationalism,  ii.,  p. 
270.)  The  Church  that  abolished  slavery  in  name 
promoted  it  in  fact;  for  her  doctrine  implied 
a  divine  sanction  of  despotism,  and  an  entire 
disregard  for  man's  natural  rights.  The  slave- 
barracks  of  ancient  Rome  were  temples  of  liberty 
compared  with  the  dungeons  of  the  hierarchical 
torture-dens,  where  thousands  of  nature's  noble- 
men vainly  invoked  death  and  madness  as  a  refuge 
from  the  power  of  a  more  cruel  foe. 

The  ascetic  dogmas  of  the  monstrous  delusion 
have  darkened  the  life-light  of  countless  millions ; 
for,  in  the  zenith  of  its  power,  Pessimism  rose 
almost  to  the  climax  of  a  worship  of  sorrow  for 
its  own  sake.  And,  when  the  sources  of  earthly 
misery  were  exhausted,  the  Church  elaborated  that 
dogma  of  a  hell  of  eternal  aud  all  but  inevitable 
tortures,  which  destroyed  the  last  solace  of  the 
wretched  as  well  as  the  peace  of  daily  life.    Dis- 


AN   EXPENSIVE   CREED.  85 

senters  were  silenced  by  armed  force.  Pessimism 
solved  the  problem  of  inflicting  the  greatest  possi- 
ble amount  of  misery  on  the  greatest  possible  num- 
ber. Every  appeal  to  common  sense  and  mercy 
was  punished  as  a  crime  against  the  authority  of 
an  infallible  church ;  every  atrocity  was  sanctioned 
that  would  help  to  crush  the  instinct  of  free  inquiry, 
the  dignity  of  manhood,  the  sense  of  justice,  the 
love  of  joy,  freedom,  and  nature.  How  many  thou- 
sands of  the  countless  victims  who  were  induced  to 
take  the  vow  of  the  monastic  orders  must  have 
awakened  to  the  significance  of  their  sacrifice,  and 
sought,  too  late,  to  regain  a  world  which  to  them 
was  as  hopelessly  lost  as  if  they  had  crossed  the 
ferry  of  Styx  !  How  many  children  of  the  joy-lov- 
ing nations,  whose  countries  had  been  cursed  with 
the  gloom  of  the  cross,  must  have  pined  for  the 
freedom  of  nature  as  the  captives  of  Tartarus 
pined  for  the  sunlight  of  the  upper  world;  or 
sought  refuge  in  death,  in  the  hope  of  reaching  a 
land  where  the  code  of  Pessimism  was  unknown. 
"According  to  that  code,"  says  Buckle,  "all  the 
natural  affections,  all  social  pleasures,  all  amuse- 
ments, and  all  the  joyous  instincts  of  the  human 
heart  were  sinful.  . .  .  The  clergy  looked  on  all  com- 
forts as  sinful  in  themselves,  merely  because  they 
were  comforts.  The  great  object  of  life  was  to  be 
in  a  state  of  constant  affliction.  Whatever  pleased 
the  senses  was  to  be  suspected.  It  mattered  not 
what  a  man  liked :  the  mere  fact  of  his  liking  it 
made  it  sinful.  Whatever  was  natural  was  wrong." 
And  that  creed  dares  to  boast  of  its  charitable  in- 
stitutions!   The  charity  of  the  Christian  Church 


OO         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

is  the  charity  of  the  fanatic,  who  for  the  love  of 
heaven  turned  a  flower-garden  into  a  desert,  and 
for  the  love  of  earth  housed  a  few  of  the  withered 
plants  and  watered  them  with  his  sickly  tears. 

The  Christian  Church  has  spread  the  blight  of 
its  influence  far  beyond  the  boundaries  of  her  spir- 
itual empire.  The  freedom  of  the  North-European 
pagans  and  the  civilization  of  the  South-European 
Moors  succumbed  to  the  incessant  attacks  of  their 
Christian  neighbors,  instigated  by  the  light-and- 
freedom-hating  fanaticism  of  their  priests. 

The  dogmas  of  the  Christian  Church  have  smit- 
ten its  victims  with  the  nauseous  disease  of  hypoc- 
risy. The  atmosphere  of  our  whole  social  life  is 
tainted  with  the  poison  of  cant  and  dissimulation. 
By  invoking  the  aid  of  the  secular  powers  to  pro- 
tect the  authority  of  dogmas  which  to  all  clear- 
sighted men  have  become  a  mixture  of  blasphemy 
and  absolute  nonsense,  the  Church  offers  a  pre- 
mium for  intellectual  dishonesty.  Every  lover  of 
truth  is  branded  with  the  reproach  of  eccentricity 
by  the  upholders  of  a  system  whose  centre  has 
always  been  an  untruth,  and  generally  a  very 
transparent  untruth.  After  doing  their  best  to 
turn  this  world  into  a  hell,  after  insulting  the 
Creator  by  disregarding  his  physical  laws  and  de- 
spising his  marvellous  earth,  the  moralists  of  the 
Galilean  Church  hope  to  conciliate  this  favor  by 
lying  for  the  glory  of  his  "son." 

The  anti-natural  dogmas  of  the  Christian  Church 
have  so  perverted  our  ideas  of  duty  and  natural 
religion  that  the  worst  enemies  of  mankind  per- 
petrated their  enormities  for  the  sake  of  conscience, 


AN  EXPENSIVE   CREED.  87 

and  millions  still  despise  this  earth  for  the  sake  of 
heaven.  Neither  the  vices  of  the  Roman  Caesar 
nor  the  excesses  of  the  French  Revolution  have 
contributed  so  much  to  weaken  the  respect  for  the 
authority  of  the  law  as  the  systematic  inhuman- 
ity of  the  Christian  Middle  Ages,  when  laws  were 
so  intolerable  that  only  the  lawless  could  enjoy 
life, — outlaws  and  irresponsible  princes,  Robin 
Hood  and  Robert  le  Diable.  The  delusion  of 
anti-naturalism  has  certainly  caused  more  mischief 
than  the  bane  of  all  human  vices  taken  together. 
"Translated  into  plain  speech,  the  foundation- 
principle  of  our  system  of  ethics  is  this :  that  all 
natural  things,  especially  our  natural  instincts,  are 
essentially  evil,  and  that  salvation  depends  upon 
mysterious,  anti-natural,  and  even  supernatural 
remedies.  This  bottom  error  has  long  biassed  all 
our  physical  and  metaphysical  theories.  The  use 
of  our  reasoning  powers  is  naturally  as  agreeable 
as  the  exercise  of  any  other  normal  function.  The 
anti-naturalists  declared  war  against  free  inquiry, 
assured  us  that  the  study  of  logic  and  natural  sci- 
ence is  highly  dangerous,  and  that  the  seeker  after 
truth  must  content  himself  with  the  light  of  ghostly 
revelations.  We  have  since  ascertained  that  the 
ghosts  are  grossly  ignorant  in  all  terrestrial  con- 
cernments, and  that  their  reports  on  the  supra- 
mundane  state  of  affairs  are,  to  say  the  least,  sus- 
piciously conflicting.  In  all  but  the  vilest  creatures, 
the  love  of  freedom  is  as  powerful  as  the  instinct 
of  self-preservation.  The  anti-naturalists  incul- 
cated the  dogma  of  implicit  submission  to  secular 
and  spiritual  authorities.      The  experiment  was 


88         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

tried  on  the  grandest  scale ;  and  the  result  has  de- 
monstrated that  blind  faith  leads  to  idiocy,  and  that 
absolute  monarchs  must  be  absolutely  abolished. 
The  testimony  of  our  noses  justifies  the  opinion 
that  fresh  air  is  preferable  to  prison  smells :  the 
anti-naturalists  informed  us  that  at  various  sea- 
sons of  the  year,  and  every  night,  the  out-door 
atmosphere  becomes  mortiferous,  and  that  sleepers 
and  invalids  ought  to  be  confined  in  air-tight  apart- 
ments. We  believed,  till  we  found  that  the  most 
implicit  believers  got  rotten  with  scrofula.  Happi- 
ness is  the  normal  condition  of  every  living  creat- 
ure ;  for,  in  a  state  of  nature,  every  normal  function 
is  connected  with  a  pleasurable  sensation.  'To 
enjoy  is  to  obey/  Animals  have  not  lost  their 
earthly  paradise:  he  who  has  observed  them  in 
the  freedom  of  their  forest-homes  cannot  doubt 
that  to  them  existence  is  a  blessing,  and  death 
merely  the  later  or  earlier  evening  of  a  happy  day. 
The  anti-naturalists  assured  us  that  God  delights 
in  the  self-abasement  and  mortification  of  his 
creatures,  and  hoped  to  gain  his  favor  by  afflicting 
themselves  in  every  possible  way, — by  voluntary 
seclusion,  fasts,  vigils,  the  wearing  of  dingy  gar- 
ments, and  abstinence  from  every  physical  pleas- 
ure. Failing  to  enamour  mankind  with  their  dole- 
ful heaven,  they  revenged  themselves  by  depriving 
them  of  their  earthly  joys.  In  hopes  of  making 
the  hereafter  more  attractive,  they  made  life  as 
repulsive  as  possible :  kill-joys  and  persecutors 
were  the  active  heroes  of  those  times ;  ascetics  and 
self-tormentors,  their  passive  exemplars.  Virtue 
and  joylessness  became  synonymes.    Men  aspiring 


AN   EXPENSIVE   CREED  89 

to  superior  merit  exchanged  the  glories  of  the 
sunny  earth  for  the  misery  of  a  gloomy  convent. 
'A  man  of  sorrows'  became  a  type  of  moral  per- 
fection. The  cross,  an  instrument  of  torture,  be- 
came the  trade-mark  of  the  new  religion.  Kosmos 
— i.e.,  beauty  and  harmony — was  the  oldest  Gre- 
cian term  for  God's  wonderful  world;  a  'vale  of 
tears,'  the  favorite  Christian  epithet. 

"  'Worldly  pleasures'  are  still  under  the  ban  of 
our  spiritual  purists.  Daily  drudgery  and  daily 
self-denial  are  still  considered  the  proper  sphere  of 
a  law-abiding  citizen,  and  special  affliction  a  spe- 
cial sign  of  divine  favor.  Life  has  become  a  soc- 
age duty.  We  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  allevi- 
ate the  distress  of  the  poor  till  it  reaches  a  degree 
that  threatens  to  end  it.  We  have  countless  be- 
nevolent institutions  for  the  prevention  of  out- 
right death,  not  one  benevolent  enough  to  make 
life  worth  living.  Infanticide  is  now  far  more  rig- 
orously punished  than  in  old  times.  We  enforce 
every  child's  right  to  live  and  become  a  humble, 
tithe-paying  Christian ;  but,  as  for  its  claim  to  live 
happy,  we  refer  it  to  the  sweet  by-and-by.  We 
shudder  at  the  barbarity  of  the  Caesars,  who  per- 
mitted the  combat  of  men  with  wild  beasts  to  cater 
to  the  amusement  of  the  Roman  populace ;  but  we 
contemplate  with  great  equanimity  the  misery  of 
millions  of  our  fellow-citizens  wearing  away  their 
lives  in  work-shops  and  factories :  millions  of  chil- 
dren of  our  own  nation  and  country  who  have  no 
recreation  but  sleep,  no  hope  but  oblivion ;  to  whom 
the  morning  sun  brings  the  summons  of  a  task-mas- 
ter, and  the  summer  season  nothing  but  lengthened 


90         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

hours  of  weary  toil, — nay,  we  make  it  the  boast  of 
our  pious  civilization  to  deprive  them  of  their  sole 
day  of  leisure,  to  interdict  their  harmless  sports 
lest  the  noise,  or  even  the  rumor  of  their  merri- 
ment, might  disturb  the  solemnity  of  an  assem- 
blage of  whining  hypocrites.  Hence,  the  reckless- 
ness, the  nihilism,  and  the  weary  pessimism  of  our 
times,  the  melancholy  that  everywhere  underlies 
the  glittering  varnish  of  our  social  life.  Hence, 
also,  that  vague  yearning  after  a  happier  hereafter, 
which  the  murderers  of  the  happy  past  have  made 
the  principal  source  of  their  revenues. 

"The  Christian  dogma  of  the  reformatory  value 
of  misery  has  been  refuted  by  the  most  dreadful 
arguments  in  the  world's  history.  The  unhappiest 
nations  are  not  only  the  most  immoral,  but  the 
most  selfish  and  the  meanest,  in  every  ugly  sense 
of  the  word.  Virtues  do  not  flourish  on  a  trampled 
soil.  Genius,  too,  is  a  child  of  light.  The  Gre- 
cian worship  of  joy  favored  the  development  of 
every  human  science,  while  the  monastic  worship 
of  sorrow  produced  nothing  but  monsters  and  chi- 
meras; for,  to  modern  science,  Christianity  bears 
about  the  same  relation  as  the  plague  does  to  the 
quarantine."     (Physical  Education,  p.  186.) 

The  doctrine  of  anti-naturalism  still  perverts  the 
principles  of  our  system  of  education,  as  it  per- 
verted the  ethics,  the  science,  the  social  tendencies, 
and  the  religion  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  the 
extra-mundane  fulcrum  of  the  lever  that  forced 
the  moral  world  from  its  normal  orbit. 

Has  the  happiness  of  the  human  race  been  se- 
cured, or  in  any  degree  promoted,  by  the  dogmas  of 


AN   EXPENSIVE   CREED. 


91 


the  Christian  religion?    Cowardice  and  stupidity 
have  too  long  connived  at  the  crime  of  abetting 
the  dissemination  of  that  earth-blighting  supersti- 
tion, and  it  is  time  to  say  the  truth  in  plain  terms. 
The  demonstrable  truth  then  is  that,  if  all  the 
countries  of  Europe  that  were  destined  to  pass 
under  the  yoke  of  the  cross  had,  instead,  for  a 
thousand  years  been  covered  by  the  ashes  of  the 
fire-storm  that  buried  the  cities  of  Pompeii  and 
Herculaneum,  the  world  would  to-day  be  benefited 
by  the  result.    Our  earth  would  be  more  fertile 
and  populous,  our  fellow-men  would  be  freer,  wiser, 
and  happier.    The  waste  of  the  volcanic  cinders 
would  have  proved  less  irreclaimable  than  the  des- 
ert  of  pessimism.      The  survivors  of  the  catas- 
trophe would  have  saved  their  children  from  the 
alternative  of  death  or  moral  slavery  that  awaited 
the  next  forty  generations  of  their  descendants. 
The  nations  of   the  Caucasian  race  would  have 
been  spared  the  systematic  extirpation  of  their 
wisest  and  bravest  men.      The   Saracens,  whose 
western  empire  was  destroyed  by  the  insane  fanati- 
cism of  the  Christian  priests,  would  have  culti- 
vated the  garden  of  civilization  in  a  more  grateful 
soil.    The  discoverers  of  America  would  not  have 
deluged  the  New  World  with  a  sea  of  blood.    The 
relics  of  pagan  art  and  science  would  have  been 
safer  in  the  custody  of  the  elements  than  in  the 
hands  of  the  monkish  forgers  and  fanatics. 

We  read  of  Ammonite  devotees  sacrificing  their 
first-born  to  Moloch;  of  Egyptian  peasants  starv- 
ing their  children,  to  fatten  a  herd  of  lazy  der- 
vishes; of  Hindu  pilgrims  performing  seventy-seven 


92         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

thousand  seven  hundred  and  seventy-seven  somer- 
saults, "for  the  benefit  of  their  souls,"  and  compell- 
ing their  families  to  join  in  the  exercise.  But 
such  poor  maniacs  are,  after  all,  less  to  blame  than 
the  juggler-guild  of  priests  and  mystics  who  first 
persuaded  them  to  renounce  their  right  of  free  in- 
vestigation in  favor  of  any  human  authority.  As 
soon  as  reason  surrenders  to  a  dogma,  the  power  of 
the  exponents  of  that  dogma  becomes  autocratic : 
they  can  securely  further  their  selfish  interests  by 
almost  any  outrage  on  common  sense  and  justice. 
If  the  philosophers  of  future  centuries  should  rec- 
ognize this  chief  root  of  superstition,  they  will 
perhaps  acquit  the  nations  of  the  Dark  Ages  from 
the  guilt  of  their  manifold  sins  against  nature,  and 
explain  their  strangest  delusions,  with  one  excep- 
tion. If  they  read  the  history  of  pessimism  and 
the  fate  of  the  nations  who  had  accepted  its  doc- 
trines, they  will  fail  to  understand  how  the  author 
of  that  creed  could  ever  be  mistaken  for  a  Saviour. 


CHAPTER  V1L 

DAYBREAK. 

And  many  of  them  that  sleep  in  the  dust  of  the  earth 
shall  awake.— Daniel  xii.,  2. 

The  revival  of  rationalism  at  the  beginning  of 
the  sixteenth  century  forms  the  turning-point  and 
the  most  interesting  era  in  the  history  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages ;  for  all  the  developments  of  our  present 
civilization  can  be  traced  to  germs  which  then  first 
ventured  into  the  light  of  day.  But  the  researches 
of  the  few  free-thinking  historians  of  that  period 
have  been  sedulously  perverted  by  the  hired  petti- 
foggers of  the  Christian  cliques.  The  insurrection 
against  the  authority  of  the  Church  has  been 
ascribed  to  the  national  antipathies  of  the  Latin 
and  German  races,  to  a  revival  of  Latin  literature 
and  paganism,  to  the  lessons  of  the  Crusades,  to 
the  intrigues  of  the  Spanish  Jews,  to  the  panthe- 
ism of  Averroes  and  other  Moorish  philosophers. 
The  most  extravagant  theories  have  been  elabo- 
rated to  avoid  the  confession  of  the  simple  truth, — 
that  the  excess  of  the  evil  itself  produced  a  reac- 
tion which  led  to  its  abatement. 

Like  the  idol  of  the  Baal  priests,  insatiable  de- 
vourers  sooner  or  later  swallow  an  explosive  mixt- 
ure ;  and  the  very  triumphs  of  an  intolerable  tyr- 
anny have  thus  often  led  to  its  overthrow.  The 
power  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  broken  by  the 
revolt  of  barbarians  whose  troops  had  been  trained 


94         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

in  the  imperial  armies.  The  Turks  selected  their 
janizaries  from  the  stoutest  young  men  of  the  van- 
quished Slavonians,  and  these  very  janizaries 
eventually  compassed  the  ruin  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire.  During  the  first  ten  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era,  the  power  of  the  Church  was  bal- 
anced in  the  North  by  the  untamed  pride  of  the 
Teutonic  princes,  and  in  the  South  by  the  linger- 
ing influence  of  pagan  philosophy.  The  fanati- 
cism of  her  militant  apostles  prevailed  against  valor 
and  common  sense,  but  the  plenitude  of  her  tri- 
umph proved  fatal  to  her  supremacy.  Europe  had 
become  an  ecclesiastical  allodium.  Wealth,  the 
treasures  of  literature,  the  control  of  the  censor- 
ship, the  institutes  of  learning,  were  almost  en- 
tirely in  the  hands  of  the  clergy.  Legislator^  were 
their  obedient  tools.  The  civilization  of  the  Moors 
had  been  annihilated.  The  high-schools  of  Toledo 
and  Cordova  had  lost  their  protectors.  The  estab- 
lishment of  the  Inquisition  and  the  vigilance  of 
her  spies  insured  the  punishment  of  non-conform- 
ists. In  less  than  a  century,  the  prodigious  num- 
ber of  convents  had  more  than  doubled.  In 
1450,  the  Franciscans  had  sixteen  thousand  two 
hundred  convents.  In  1520,  the  subdivision  of 
the  order  known  as  the  ''Observants"  had  thirty- 
four  thousand  monasteries  of  their  own.  In  the 
fifteenth  century,  the  Dominicans  and  Augustin- 
ians  had  spread  all  over  Western  Europe.  In 
many  parts  of  Spain  there  were  six  friars  and  two 
priests  for  every  dozen  workingmen.  In  Spain  and 
Portugal,  the  Jews  had  shared  the  fate  of  the 
Moriscoes ;  and,  in  Germany,  the  Inquisitor  Hog- 


DAYBREAK.  95 

straaten  attempted  the  destruction  of  their  entire 
literature,  with  the  exception  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment.   Free  thinkers  were  not  only  unaided  in  the 
pursuit  of  truth,  but  effectually  debarred  from  its 
dissemination.     The  Church  controlled  the  whole 
machinery  of  education,  and  the  votaries  of  knowl- 
edge had  to  become  priests  or  monks.     Among  the 
many  millions  who  entered    the   monasteries  in 
search  of  peace  or  in  quest  of  the  refectory,  a  few 
hundred  came  with  higher  aims,  and  their  unselfish 
love  of  truth  drove  them  to  a  fierce  rebellion  against 
the  power  of  her  enemies.    The  Church  that  tried  to 
digest  this  mixture  of  monachism  and  philosophy 
found  that  she  had  swallowed  the  prescription  of 
Daniel.     The  font  of  her  consecrated  water  had 
been  vaunted  as  the  fountain  of  truth.     All  other 
well-springs  of  knowledge  had  been  stopped,  and 
pilgrims  whose  thirst  could  not  be  stilled  with 
sophisms  had  been  admitted  behind  the  scenes. 
The  revelations  that  dispelled  the  shadows  of  the 
Middle  Ages  did  not  come  from  Cordova  or  Bag- 
dad, but  from  the  strongholds  of  the   Christian 
hierarchy.    Luther,  Campanella,  Eckardt,  Charron, 
Roger  Bacon,  Lipsius,  and  Jordan   Bruno  were 
monks.    Duns  Scotus,  Vanini,  Abelard,  and  Wool- 
ston  were  theologians.    Jean  Meslier  was  a  Catho- 
lic clergyman.    These  men,  and  hundreds  of  their 
contemporaries,  had  entered  the  Church  without 
any  special  bias  in  favor  of  anti-naturalism.    In 
Northern  Germany,  the  word  «  Pfaffe"  (a  Romish 
priest)  had  never  ceased  to  be  a  synonyme  of 
everything  unmanly  and  contemptible.    In  South- 
ern Italy,  the  descendants  of  the  old  hero  race  still 


96         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

cherished  the  traditions  of  their  forefathers,  and 
hated  the  chains  which  they  were  unable  to  break. 
In  the  hearts  of  such  men,  the  study  of  ancient 
history,  the  echoes  from  the  paradise  of  the  past, 
and  the  knowledge  of  the  true  character  of  the 
moralists  who  had  sacrificed  that  paradise  to  force 
their  way  to  the  throne  of  the  world, — this  knowl- 
edge, and  the  comparison  of  the  past  and  present 
condition  of  their  native  lands,  must  have  pro- 
duced a  degree  of  indignation  which  we  can  only 
conceive  by  imagining  an  analogy  of  our  own 
country  and  age. 

•  Suppose  that  the  Californian  Chinese  manage  to 
propagate  a  superstition  which  finally  enables  them 
to  subvert  the  civilization  of  the  North  American 
continent.  The  new  Celestial  Empire  is  governed 
on  the  principle  of  Buddha,  that  all  earthly  posses- 
sions are  vain,  and  that  salvation  can  be  obtained 
only  by  suppressing  our  natural  instincts.  By  the 
alliance  of  Pagoda  and  State,  the  Buddhists  secure 
the  aid  of  the  civil  powers,  and,  in  return,  sanc- 
tion the  basest  tyrannies  of  the  secular  rulers  by 
inculcating  the  duty  of  passive  submission  to  "the 
powers  that  be."  *    In  the  summit  regions  of  the 

*  As  long  as  their  own  necks  were  in  danger,  the  clerics  of 
the  early  Christian  Church  inveighed  agiinst  tyranny  and 
intolerance;  but,  as  soon  as  that  danger  was  past,  the  doc- 
trine of  passive  submission  to  injustice  bore  its  natural 
fruit,  and  the  lot  of  the  European  peasantry  became  infi- 
nitely worse  than  that  of  the  so-called  slaves  of  the  Roman 
Empire  and  the  Grecian  Republics,  where  their  servitude 
was  so  often  merely  nominal,  as  many  of  them  were  em- 
ployed as  pedagogues  and  artists,— nay,  as  banker*,  actors, 
and  historians.  Besides,  the  worst  Roman  despots  en- 
slaved only  foreign  prisoners  of  war,  while  the  Christian 
princes,  bishops,  and  abbots  enslaved  their  own  country- 
men, and  treated  them  with  a  degree  of  relentless  and  sys- 
tematic inhumanity  that  produced  an  incomparably  greater 
aggregate  of  misery  than  the  occasional  truculent  caprices 
or  the  pagan  tyrants. 


DAYBREAK.  97 

Rocky  Mountains,  a  few  Anglo-American  tribes 
still  maintain  the  independence  of  their  Republi- 
can forefathers ;  but  the  farmers  of  the  plains  are 
captured,  branded  like  sheep,  and  divided  in 
chain-gangs  to  work  for  the  monks  of  the 
Buddhistic  convents  that  spring  up  like  mush- 
rooms in  every  town.  Turner  Halls,  gymnasiums,* 
and  public  baths  f  are  suppressed  as  "fleshly  vani- 
ties," tending*  to  divert  the  minds  of  men  from 
things  spiritual.  Our  public  libraries  are  demol- 
ished ;  X  some  of  the  larger  volumes  are  packed  off 
to  the  monasteries,  not  from  an  appreciation  of 
their  literary  value,  but  for  the  sake  of  their  fly- 
leaves and  blank  margins,  which  are  to  be  used  for 
the  record  of  Buddhistic  ghost  stories.  The  New 
England  universities  are  closed  by  order  of  the 
Grand  Mandarin.  §  Industrial  progress  is  limited 
to  the  invention  of  improved  machinery  for  the 
torture  of  heretics.  The  government  bounty  for 
timber  plantations  is  discontinued.  The  forests 
are  devastated,  and  the  bonzes  advise  the  proprie- 
tors to  avert  droughts  by  prayer-meetings.  The 
Grand  Lama  instructs  his  provincials  to  suppress 
unbelief  by  the  enforcement  of  an  elaborate  penal 
code.  Thousands  of  scholars  are  burned  alive  for 
maintaining  the  difference  between  one  and  three. 

*The  Olympic  festivals  and  the  Capitoline  games  were 
suppressed  by  order  of  the  Christian  Emperor  Theodosius, 
A.D.  394. 

t  The  Spanish  clergy  abolished  the  public  baths  of  the 
Moriscoes.  Even  baths  fh  private  houses  were  at  last  inter- 
dicted. 

t  The  Christian  monks  destroyed  the  Serapian  Library  of 
Alexandria  and  murdered  the  citizens  who  resisted  the 
vandalism,  A.D.  389. 

§  The  University  of  Athens  and  the  academies  of  Berytus 
and  Thessalonica  were  suppressed  by  order  of  the  Chris- 
tian Emperor  Justinian. 


98         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

Mathematicians  are  treated  as  enemies  of  the  hu- 
man race.*  The  professors  of  the  Washington 
Observatory  receive  forty  bamboo  stripes  for  de- 
monstrating the  annual  motion  of  the  earth,  and 
twenty-five  extra  for  maintaining  her  diurnal  mo- 
tion. Public  festivals  are  enlivened  by  the  whole- 
sale burning  of  misbelievers.  All  cities,  all  schools, 
all  places  of  public  resort  are  infested  with  the 
spies  of  the  Mongolian  Inquisition.  Clerical  ter- 
rorism depopulates  the  land.  Misery  and  famine 
follow  in  the  wake  of  the  Buddhistic  propagan- 
dists. The  industrial  classes  abandon  their  homes 
by  thousands.  Buddhistic  monks  fatten  on  the 
spoils  of  the  exiles ;  but  before  the  families  of  non- 
conformists are  permitted  to  depart,  their  sons  and 
daughters  are  dragged  away  to  the  slavery  of  the 
Mongolian  convent.  Would  we  not,  like  the  Span- 
ish Moors,  tear  our  children  limb  from  limb  to  pre- 
serve them  from  such  a  fate  ? 

Yet  all  this  is  a  mere  outline  of  the  change  from 
the  civilization  of  the  nature-loving  pagans  to  the 
barbarism  of  the  Galilean  pessimists  :  the  realities 
of  the  Middle  Ages  supplied  the  details  of  the 
dreadful  contrast.  The  very  stones  of  the  South- 
European  convents  still  proclaimed  the  godlike 
forms  of  the  men  who  celebrated  life  as  a  festival, 
and  whose  desecrated  temples  now  housed  a  whin- 
ing brood  of  nature-hating  and  nature-hated  cari- 
catures of  the  human  shape. 

The  peasants  of  the  North  still  cherished  the 
battle-hymns  and  hunting-songs  of  their  free  fore- 

*  Justinian  and  several  of  his  successors  issued  edicts 
for  the  "suppression  of  mathematicians," 


DAYBREAK.  99 

fathers,  while  their  children  were  forced  to  chant 
the  puling  cant  of  the  Christian  litany.  The  tra- 
ditions of  the  folk-lore  still  preserved  the  memory 
of  a  time  when  the  arena  of  life  awarded  its 
wreaths  to  valor  and  manly  strength,  while  now 
hypocrisy  and  servility  were  the  beaten  roads  to 
advancement.  Wasted  fields,  starving  hamlets, 
and  gloomy  cloisters  covered  the  face  of  the  earth 
where  sculptured  ruins  mourned  the  glory  of  by- 
gone times ;  the  temples  and  palaces  of  Italy,  the 
academies  of  Greece,  the»sacred  groves  of  Daphne, 
the  shady  mountain  forests  of  Taurus  and  Leb- 
anon, had  been  devastated  to  fatten  the  foul  vam- 
pires of  the  Galilean  Church. 

Nor  need  we  doubt  that  the  clearer-sighted 
students  of  ancient  literature  had  discerned  the 
change  which  had  come  over  the  moral  world.  No 
educational  bias  could  entirely  blind  them  to  the 
glaring  contrast  between  the  logic,  the  critical 
acumen,  the  manly  eloquence,  the  noble  self-reli- 
ance, the  sublime  poetry  of  the  Pagan  philosophers 
and  old  Hebrew  prophets,  and  the  idiotic  rant  and 
disgusting  sophistry  of  the  monastic  writers.  No 
great  poet,  no  independent  philosopher,  had  ap- 
peared for  the  last  eleven  centuries.  The  Muses 
had  fled  the  desecrated  land;  the  laurel  withered 
in  the  soil  of  pessimism;  Nature  had  revenged 
herself  upon  her  enemies.  The  philosophers  of 
the  sixteenth  century  might  fail  to  recognize  the 
secret  of  pessimism,  but  they  could  not  help  seeing 
the  result  of  its  tendencies,  the  stultifying,  soul- 
diseasing,  unmanning,  debasing,  and  earth-blight- 
ing   influence    of    its    dogmas.      They  saw  that 


100        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EA8T. 

hypocrites  and  sycophants  prospered,  while  thou- 
sands of  free  thinkers,  many  of  whom  they  must 
have  known  as  the  truest  of  Nature's  noblemen, 
had  to  rot  behind  prison  walls,  or  could  fertilize 
the  seed  of  liberty  only  with  their  blood.  What 
had  the  world  gained  by  its  conversion  from 
Naturalism  to  Anti-naturalism?  "Faith,"  blind 
faith,  the  supposed  soul-saving  merit  of  mental 
prostitution,  as  the  only  recompense  for  so  many 
sacrifices.  And  now  the  foundations  of  that  faith 
proved  unsound,  nay,  utterly  unsubstantial  and 
untenable.  The  honest  inquirers  into  the  evidences 
of  the  saving  faith  awakened  to  a  recognition  of 
the  fact  that  the  supposed  heavenly  star  which  had 
lured  the  last  forty  generations  to  neglect  and  ruin 
their  earth  was  the  ignis  fatuus  of  a  bottomless 
swamp.  In  short,  the  fearful  truth  dawned  upon 
them  that  the  paradise  of  antiquity  had  been  sac- 
rificed in  vain.  They  could  no  longer  doubt  that 
the  chains  which  galled  the  noblest  races  of  Eu- 
rope were  an  unmixed  curse,  and  the  worst  curse 
which  had  ever  befallen  the  children  of  men. 
That  this  conviction  begat  a  thirst  for  freedom 
which  often  overcame  the  fear  of  death  is  proved 
by  the  martyrdom  of  the  twenty-six  thousand 
Protestants,  in  the  noblest  sense  of  the  word,  who 
in  the  course  of  the  sixteenth  century  bartered 
their  lives  for  the  luxury  of  breaking  the  silence 
which  threatened  to  crush  their  hearts.*  Those 
who  declined  the  crown  of  martyrdom  or  hoped 

♦Between  1500  and  1580,  the  Inquisition  murdered  two 
hundred  and  seventy  thousand  non-conformists.  Nine- 
tenths  of  these  were  American  pagans  and  Spanish  Mo- 
hammedans and  Jews ;  the  rest  were  Caucasian  sceptics. 


DAYBREAK. 


101 


to  see  the  dawn  of  a  better  day,  and  yet  wished  to 
promote  its  advent,  adopted  two  indirect  methods 
of  attaining  their  object.     They  veiled  their  reve- 
lations in  the  language  of  allegory,  like  Eckardt, 
Silesius,  and  Campanella,  or  they  published  their 
views  in  the  name  of  former  free  thinkers,  and  for 
the  feigned  purpose  of  refuting  them.    The  latter 
plan  was  adopted  by  Reuchlin,  Lipsius,  and  Wool- 
ston,  and  with  eminent  success  by  the  precursor 
of  Voltaire,  Lucilio  Vanini.    Thomas  Woolston's 
Apology  is  not  weaker  than  his  statement  of  the 
heresies  he  pretends  to- controvert.    But  Vanini's 
Amphitheatre   anticipates  the  best    arguments    of 
Voltaire,  Hume,  and   Thomas  Paine.    The  mas- 
terly exposition  of  these  arguments — in  pretended 
quotations  from  the  writings  of  obscure  heretics- 
is  followed  by  a  not  less  masterly  burlesque  of 
the  monkish  method  of  controversy,  clumsy  dog- 
matism,   personalities,    and    swaggering    threats. 
Yet  this  scathing    satire   not  only  received  the 
imprimatur  of  the  government  censor,  but  was 
published  with  the  special  recommendation  of  an 
ecclesiastical  college,  and  did,  probably,  more  to 
disseminate  anti-clerical  tenets  than  any  work  of 
the  professed  reformers.    But  no  man  can  always 
wear  a  mask.    In  Toulouse,  Vanini  discovered  him- 
self to  a  better-masked  bigot,  who  hastened  to 
betray  him  to  the    Holy  Inquisition.      He  was 
burned  at  the  stake.    Jordan  Bruno,  Savonarola, 
Leszynski,    Arnold    of    Brescia,    Stephen    Dolet, 
Mathew  Hamount,  were    tortured    and    burned. 
Campanella  was    racked    and    persecuted    till    a 
merciful  death  ended  his  misery;  Roger  Bacon 


102  THE    3ECRET   OF    THE   EAST. 

was  persecuted  and  exiled;  Thomas  Woolston 
died  in  prison;  Eckardt,  Abelard,  and  Lipsius 
were  bullied  into  silence.  Their  works  were 
burned,  their  disciples  were  suppressed ;  but  their 
labor  had  not  been  in  vain.  Their  fate  had  proved 
that  only  the  success  of  an  open  rebellion  could 
liberate  the  human  race  from  the  hell  of  Anti- 
naturalism  ;  and  only  in  this  sense  is  it  true  that 
the  fiendish  intolerance  of  the  Middle  Ages  has 
promoted  the  progress  of  European  civilization.* 

♦Every  neplus  ultra  is  interesting,  and  the  impudence  of 
Jesuitical  sophistry  has  never  surpassed  the  following 
dictum  of  a  Protestant  Jesuit:  "So  large  a  thinker  as 
Albert  R6ville  has  expressed  his  belief  that  the  intolerance 
of  Christianity  indicated  a  passionate  love  of  truth,  which 
has  created  modern  science.  He  says  that,  'if  Europe  had 
not  passed  through  tbose  ages  of  intolerance,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  the  science  of  our  day  would  ever  have  arrived.'  " 
—North  American  Review,  May,  1883,  p.  473.  In  justice  to 
the  honor  of  our  age,  I  must  quote  another  contemporary. 
"The  per-ecutor,"  says  W.  H.  JLecky,  "can  never  be  certain 
that  he  is  not  persecuting  truth  rather  than  error,  but  he 
may  be  quite  certain  that  he  is  suppressing  the  spirit  of 
truth.  And,  indeed,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the 
doctrines  I  have  reviewed  represent  the  most  skilful  and 
at  the  same  time  most  successful  conspiracy  against  that 
spirit  that  has  ever  exir-ted  among  mankind.  Until  the 
seventeenth  century,  every  mental  disposition  which  phi- 
losophy pronounces  to  be  essential  to  a  legitimate  research 
was  almost  unifor  nly  branded  as  a  sin;  and  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  most  deadly  intellectual  vices  were  delib- 
erately inculcated  as  virtues In  a  word,  there  is  scarcely 

a  disposition  that  marks  the  love  of  aostract  truth,  and 
scarcely  a  rule  which  reason  teaches  as  essential  for  its 
attainment  that  theologians  did  not  for  centuries- stigma- 
tize as  offensive  to  the  Almighty."— Hist.  Rat.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  90. 

"Every  man  loves  liberty,"  says  Ludwig  Boerne;  "but 
the  unjust  claims  it  for  himself  alone,  the  just  for  all." 
Between  dogmatism  and  the  "love  of  truth"  there  is  just 
as  much  difference  as  between  despotism  and  the  love  of 
freedom.  A  disposition  to  take  liberties  would  be  a  queer 
claim  to  the  merit  of  liberalism.  In  the  last  eight  years  of 
his  reign,  the  Czar  Nicholas  sentenced  forty-two  thousand 
political  prisoners  to  the  Siberian  mines  or  the  wor-e  mig 
ery  of  a  Russian  jail,  and  at  his  command  eleven  thousand 
Polish  boys  were  torn  from  their  parents  and  dragged 
away  to  the  military  barracks  of  Eastern  Russia.  These 
exploits  of  the  Slavonic  Pope  the  eulogist  of  Mons.  Albert 
Reville  would  probably  ascribe  to  a  passionate  love  of  lib- 


DAYBREAK.  103 

The  tyranny  of  the  Church  led  to  the  Protestant 
Revolt,  as  the  tyranny  of  the  French  autocrats  led 
to  the  French  Revolution.  Christian  intolerance 
has  promoted  science  as  the  plague  has  promoted 
the  quarantine. 

erty,— the  liberty  of  tyrannizing  his  subjects.  For  more 
than  eleven  hundred  years,  the  activity  of  Monsieur  R6- 
ville's  passionate  friends  obstructed  the  progress  of  all 
sciences,  with  two  exceptions;  for  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
they  successfully  cultivated  the  science  of  forging  miracu- 
lous biographies  and  the  science  of  suppressing  free  in- 
quiry. 


CHAPTER  Vm. 

THE   PROTESTANT  REVOLT. 

Tyranny  begins  her  arguments  by  fettering  free  speech. 
Begin  your  reply  by  breaking  your  fetters.— Mirabeau. 

The  analogies  of  body  and  mind  are  most 
strikingly  exhibited  in  the  development  of  physi- 
cal and  moral  poison-habits.  At  first,  every  poison 
is  repulsive.  Children  abhor  the  very  smell  of 
alcohol.  The  first  effect  of  tobacco  is  that  of  a 
nauseating  drug.  The  disgusting  taste  of  opium 
prevails  through  every  disguise.  Nature  protests 
against  the  incipience  of  an  insidious  "second  nat- 
ure," and  this  protective  instinct  often  saves  where 
neither  law  nor  science  yields  its  aid.  In  the  slum- 
alleys  of  our  great  cities,  and  beset  by  daily  tempta- 
tions, the  children  of  poverty  and  ignorance  often 
preserve  their  physical  purity  by  an  innate  repug- 
nance to  vice ;  and  even  in  Northern  China  there  is 
a  "Vigilance  Society,"  whose  members,  in  defiance 
of  law,  pledge  themselves  to  antagonize  the  abettors 
of  the  opium  traffic  and  use  all  possible  means  to 
restrict  an  evil  which  they  cannot  suppress.  Gross 
vices  do  not  achieve  an  easy  conquest :  the  protests 
of  a  faithful  conscience  warn  us  again  and  again  ; 
but,  if  that  protest  is  persistently  disregarded,  nat- 
ure at  last  adapts  herself  to  the  abnormal  condi- 
tion, and  the  instinctive  repugnance  gives  way 
to  a  morbid  craving  for  the  unnatural  stimulus. 
Healthy  food  grows  insipid.    The  toper  becomes  a 


THE  PROTESTANT  REVOLT.        105 

slave  to  his  drug ;  and,  by  educational  influences, 
the  baneful  habit  may  develop  into  a  hereditary  or 
even  national  vice. 

In  a  similar  way,  such  moral  poisons  as  hypoc- 
risy, the   miracle-mania,  and   pessimism  have  to 
overcome  the  resistance  of  every  healthier  instinct 
before  they  can  enslave  the  mind  of  a  whole  na- 
tion.   In  Southern  Europe,  the  doctrines  of  the  Gal- 
ilean Church  have  achieved  this  victory.     Among 
the  Caucasian  races  of  the  Mediterranean  penin- 
sula, millions    of    our  fellow-men  have  lost  the 
normal  instincts  of  their  species,  and  have  come  to 
enjoy  the  poison  of  anti-naturalism.    The  Greek 
and  Roman  monks  vied  in  self-abasement,  self- 
mutilation,  and  the  voluntary  sacrifice  of  their 
reason,  as  their  forefathers  vied  in  science  and  he- 
roic games.    Patriotism  has  withered  under  the 
influence  of  anti-natural  dogmas.      Unmanliness 
has  ceased  to  be  a  reproach.    Manly  self-reliance 
and  athletic  sports  have  lost  their  charm.    The 
prescriptions   of   the    Jesuitical   poison  -  mongers 
have  made  simple  truth  insipid :  their  victims  have 
contracted  a  morbid  craving  for  supernaturalism, 
and  love  cant  for  its  own  sake.     The  Celtic  races, 
whose  forefathers  had  become  inured  to  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  anarchy  and  despotism,  have  accepted  the 
yoke  of  the  cross  and  reserved  their  protestantism 
for  the  struggles  of  the  political   arena.     Their 
priests  have  maintained  their  influence  by  catering 
to  their  national  prejudices. 

But  the  Germanic  races  of  Northern  Europe 
have  never  been  really  converted.  Their  fore- 
fathers were  compelled  to  submit  to  the  logic  of 


106        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

superior  force ;  but  their  acquiescence  was  that  of 
the  North-China  Vigilance  Society — a  latent  pro- 
test. Their  conqueror  had  to  baptize  them  in 
their  own  blood,  and  they  yielded  only  after  all 
their  able-bodied  men  had  literally  been  cut  into 
pieces.  In  the  winter  of  772,  the  apostle  of  North- 
ern Germany  crossed  the  Weser  with  an  army  of 
sixty  thousand  men,  and  founded  the  bishoprics  of 
Halberstadt,  Minden,  and  Paderborn;  while  the 
natives  disputed  every  inch  of  the  ground,  and 
only  retreated  after  the  devastation  of  their  vil- 
lages had  deprived  them  of  the  means  of  subsist- 
ence. Two  years  after,  they  rallied  their  forces, 
expelled  their  priests,  and  chased  them  across  the 
Rhine,  when  the  return  of  Charlemagne  compelled 
them  once  more  to  yield  their  homes  to  the  spoiler 
and  take  refuge  in  the  wilds  of  the  far  North-east. 
Here,  they  were  attacked  in  776,  and  repelled  the 
invaders  with  such  slaughter  that  the  royal  propa- 
gandist thought  it  wiser  to  confine  his  efforts  to 
the  Westphalian  lowlands.  New  bishoprics  were 
founded;  and  the  remaining  inhabitants  shared 
the  fate  of  the  peasantry  in  the  priest-ridden 
Frankish  crown-lands,  and  were  treated  worse 
than  brute  beasts,  till  the  menaces  of  the  Spanish 
Moors  called  their  oppressor  across  the  Pyrenees. 
As  soon  as  he  was  gone,  all  Saxony  rose  in  a  fierce 
insurrection.  The  hero  Wittekind  united  the 
scattered  tribes,  and  advanced  as  far  as  Osnabruck, 
but  was  soon  confronted  by  all  the  forces  of  the 
Frankish  Empire;  and,  during  the  next  seven 
years,  a  war  of  extermination  turned  his  native 
land  into  a  desert.    When  the  insurgents  had  been 


THE  PROTESTANT  REVOLT.         107 

driven  into  the  furthest  recesses  of  the  Hartz 
Mountains,  the  priests  returned;  and  the  "con- 
verted" Saxons  tilled  their  land  as  duly  baptized 
bondsmen  till  792,  when  the  intolerable  despotism 
of  their  oppressor  goaded  them  into  a  fresh  rebel- 
lion. But  the  dire  tactics  of  the  iron-clad  Franks 
prevailed  again,  and  the  war  now  became  a  re- 
morseless man-hunt.  The  natives  were  waylaid  at 
the  ruins  of  their  homesteads  and  at  the  river- 
fords.  Thousands  of  women  aDd  children  were 
dragged  off  into  exile,  and  the  male  captives  were 
slain  like  wolves.  In  Quedlinburg  alone,  four 
thousand  prisoners  were  beheaded  in  one  day. 

There  was  no  gainsaying  such  arguments,  and 
the  next  twenty  generations  of  the  Saxon  yeomen 
acted  on  the  principle  that  "Christian  submission 
to  the  powers  that  be"  may  sometimes  be  the  safest 
plan.  But  no  other  slaves  have  so  loathed  the 
chains  they  could  not  break.  When  famine  and 
defeat  began  to  thin  the  ranks  of  Prince  Witte- 
kind,  the  Franks  erected  large  crosses,  as  rallying- 
places  for  "converts";  i.e.,  deserters,  who  wished  to 
accept  baptism  and  the  bread  of  bondage.  Zu 
Kreuze  kriechen  (crawling  to  cross)  has  ever  since 
been  the  most  contemptuous  term  in  the  German 
language.  Pfaffenthum  and  pfaffiscli  (from  Pfaffe, 
a  Romish  priest)  have  become  the  synonym es  of 
obscurantism  and  Jesuitical  intrigues.  The  heroes 
of  the  national  ballads  were  not  the  whining 
saints  of  the  Romish  Church,  but  men  like  Robin 
Hood  or  Ritter  Siegfried  and  Tannhauser.  The 
favorite  political  leaders  were  free  thinkers,  like 
Otto  I.,  Frederic  Barbarossa  (as  afterward  Frederic 


108        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

the  Great),  or  Goetz  von  Berlichingen,  Ulric  Hut- 
ten,  and  George  Frundsberg,  who  openly  adopted 
the  motto,  "Gottes  Freund,  der  Pfaffen  Feind." 

The  descendants  of  the  manful  old  Odin-wor- 
shippers still  prayed  to  a  hero-protecting,  bounte- 
ous All-father  rather  than  to  a  joy-hating,  cant- 
loving  "head-of-the-clerical-interest."  Long  after 
the  litanies  and  groaning  procession  hymns  of 
Southern  Europe  had  silenced  the  lyre  of  Anac- 
reon,  and  even  in  Southern  Germany  passion-plays 
had  superseded  the  lays  of  the  minnesingers,  the 
songs  of  the  North  still  breathed  a  fervid  love  of 
nature.*  Throughout  Northern  Europe,  and  long 
before  Luther,  independence  and  protestantism 
were  as  invariable  concomitants  as  faith  and 
slavery.  The  German  nobles  paid  neither  spirit- 
ual nor  material  tithes.  A  few  of  them  kept  pri- 
vate chaplains,  in  order  to  complete  the  clientele  of 
a  liberal  household,  or  for  educational  purposes  (as 
their  successors  still  employ  candidates  of  theol- 
ogy) ;  but  their  practical  habits  were  the  very  an- 
tithesis of  monkish  humility,  and  that  anti-natural 
renunciation  of  earthly  happiness  which  the  Church 
represented  as  the  highest  type  of  human  virtue. 

*In  the  Streitfragen  (Minden,  Wilhelm  Kohler)  for  Janu- 
ary, 1881,  Prof.  Kepler  quotes  the  following  "Alte  Jager- 
Lied"  (Old  Hunter's  Song):— 

"Nun  steig'  ich  nimmer  wieder  ins  graue  Dorf  hinab. 
Im  Walde  will  ich  wohnen ;  im  Wald  grabt  mir  mein  Grab : 
Wo  mir  des  Pf arrer's  Kiihe  nicht  drauf  zur  Weide  gehn ; 
Das  Wild   soil   driiber  springen,   kein   Kreuz  im  Wege 
stehn!" 

Literally:— 
"Now,  nevermore  shall  I  return  to  the  gray  old  village. 
In  the  woods  let  me  live;  in  the  woods  dig  me  my  grave: 
Where  the  cows  of  the  priest  cannot  batten  upon  its  grass; 
Above  it  let  the  wild  deer  play,  no  Christian  cross  stand  in 
the  way." 


THE  PROTESTANT  REVOLT.        109 

"Self-help"  was  their  motto.  They  redressed  their 
own  wrongs,  and  maintained  their  rights  even 
against  their  sovereign.  In  their  castle  halls,  the 
rule  of  free  speech  recognized  no  higher  law  what- 
ever. They  did  not  devote  their  holidays  to  the 
self-afflictions  of  nature-hating  fanatics,  but  to  the 
recreations  of  their  free  ancestors, — to  the  chase, 
to  songs,  and  athletic  sports.  At  a  time  when  the 
Spanish  cavaliers  competed  for  the  honor  of  march- 
ing in  procession  with  the  pageant  of  an  auto-da- 
fe,  Francis  von  Sickingen  risked  his  head  rather 
than  surrender  the  free  thinker  Hutten,  and  Martin 
Luther  found  a  protector  in  every  German  noble- 
man.* As  soon  as  the  cities  of  the  Hanseatic 
League  became  strong  enough  to  resist  the  tyranny 
of  the  Church,  they  exhibited  the  same  spirit  of 
defiance;  and  several  of  the  North-German  free 
towns  renounced  the  advantage  of  a  papal  recogni- 
tion rather  than  comply  with  the  demands  of  the 
In  quisitor-general. 

The  priests,  in  the  mean  time,  had  not  been  idle. 
Their  recognized  efficiency  as  the  allies  of  despot- 
ism secured  them  the  connivance  of  every  despotic 
ruler ;  they  controlled  the  educational  institutions ; 
they  influenced  legislation ;  they  founded  convents 
and  seminaries.  But,  in  spite  of  all  that,  their 
Church  remained  an  exotic  plant,  and  had  con- 

*  At  a  time  when  a  man  had  to  choose  between  slavery 
and  lawless  independence,  the  chivalry  of  Northern  Eu- 
rope often  maintained  that  independence  at  the  expense 
of  their  fellow-men ;  but,  in  better  times,  they  have  pro- 
duced many  of  those  truest  friends  of  liberty  who  demand 
freedom  for  others  as  well  as  for  themselves,— e.g.,  Coligny, 
Volney,  Hutten,  Holbach,  Philip  of  Hessen,  Stein,  Hum- 
boldt, De  Ligne,  Mansfield,  Bolingbroke,  Byron,  Halifax, 
Queensbury,  Egmont,  Barneveldt,  Kossuth,  Bathyani. 


110  THE   SECRET   OF   THE   EAST. 

stantly  to  be  fertilized  by  papal  subsidies.  I  jlq 
the  North-China  Temperance  League,  the  nations 
of  Northern  Europe  were  forced  to  connive  at  a 
pernicious  poison- traffic,  but  never  ceased  to  detest 
the  poison.  The  temptations  of  the  anti-natural- 
ists had  failed  to  corrupt  their  healthier  instincts. 
Hence,  the  apparent  paradox  that  the  latest  con- 
verts were  the  first  to  revolt ;  while  those  who  had 
suffered  most  under  the  yoke  of  the  Church  were 
unable  or  unwilling  to  break  their  chains.  For 
those  chains  were  the  fetters  of  an  inveterate 
poison-vice.  "Hear  me  first  a  few  words,"  said  a 
young  man,  whom  Dr.  Mussey  had  admonished 
about  his  intemperate  propensities,  "and  then  you 
may  proceed.  I  am  sensible  that  an  indulgence 
in  this  habit  will  lead  to  loss  of  property,  the  loss 
of  reputation,  the  loss  of  domestic  happiness,  to 
premature  death,  and  to  the  irretrievable  loss  of 
my  immortal  soul;  and  now,  with  all  this  convic- 
tion resting  firmly  on  my  mind  and  flashing  over 
my  conscience  like  lightning,  if  I  still  continue  to 
drink,  do  you  suppose  anything  you  can  say  will 
deter  me  from  the  practice  ?" 

In  similar  words,  Cardinal  Retz  might  have 
answered  the  arguments  of  Erasmus.  For  the 
nations  of  the  Latin  races,  the  chance  of  salvation 
had  come  too  late.  The  brain — their  enlightened 
men — clearly  saw  the  coming  tophet  of  degenera- 
tion and  national  bankruptcy ;  but  the  body  of  the 
people  were  intoxicated  with  the  fumes  of  the 
Moloch  fire,  and  pursued  the  road  to  ruin  like 
blindfolded  victims.  The  poison  of  anti-natural- 
ism had  fastened  upon  their  souls.     They  had  lost 


THE   PROTESTANT   REVOLT.  HI 

not  only  their  liberty,  but  their  desire  for  libera- 
tion.    The  systematic  murder  of  all  avowed  free 
thinkers    had    emasculated    the    national    mind. 
They    were    contentedly    ignorant.      They    had 
ceased  to  despise  mental  prostitution.     They  had 
come  to  enjoy  the  ceremonies  and  wretched  mum- 
meries of  their  Church.     Spain  and  Portugal  have 
sunk  to  the  level  of  the  East-Buddhistic  nations. 
Ireland,  Southern  Germany,  and  Southern  France 
still  sleep;   and  Greece  will  awake  no  more.    In 
Italy,  however,  the    reaction    of    the  Protestant 
propaganda  has  led  to  a  quasi  compromise,— the 
intellectual  emancipation  of  the  educated  classes. 
By  a  system  of    mutual   concessions,  the  lower 
orders  have  been  abandoned  to  the  wiles  of  their 
clerical  obscurantists ;  while  scholars  indulge  in  a 
scepticism  that  transcends  all  that  Southern  Eu- 
rope witnessed  in  the  days  of  Lucretius  and  Dia- 
goras.      The  writings  of  Leopardi,  Mundt,  and 
Taine  throw  a  curious  light  on  this  anomaly  of 
social  life,  even  in  Rome  itself* 

i  J!1?  the  mteen}\ century,  the  revival  of  classical  studies 
led  to  a  somewhat  similar  result.  The  Colonnas  and  Mo- 
ciicis  protected  several  avowed  free  thinkers,  and  the  Dic- 
tionary of  the  French  Encyclopaedists  has  preserved  the 
following  anecdote:  "Prince  Pico  de  Mirandola  once  met 
wh?!.^1^^61!1-^^®1101186  of  tue  courtesan  Emilia, 
ta  iwid  Wi?ha'aiHei0ly  Father's,  daughter,  was  confined 
™w, nd-kirth,  and  the  people  of  Rome  were  discussing 
whether  the  child  belonged  to  the  pope,  to  his  son  Cesar, 
or  to  Lucretia's  husband,  Alphonso  of  Aragon,  who  was 
considered  — -.  The  conversation  immediately  became 
<Mv  Mt«2  PUd  *?ay-  Cardinal  B^bo  relates  a  part  of  itl 
wL       ?  PlC0'   say?  the  P°Pe'  'whom  do  you  think  the 

S^^vvST7'  '*  think  your  sVin-law,'  re- 
plied Pico.  'What!  how  can  you  possibly  believe  such 
nonsense?'  <I  believe  it  by  faith/  'But,  surety,  ?ou 
know  that  an  —-cannot  be  a  father.'  'Faith,'  replied 
S,«ihia°n  v8tS  in  b.ehevinS  tbi°£s  because  they  are  im- 
possible. You  require  me  to  believe  more  incomprehensi- 
ble mysteries.    Am  I  not  bound  to  believe  that  —  had  no 


112  THE   SECRET   OF    THE   EAST. 

In  Switzerland,  Hungary,  and  other  countries  of 
mixed  races,  a  part  of  the  populace  had  actually  to 
be  bribed  to  achieve  their  own  salvation.  Others 
merely  exchanged  creeds,  and  often  adopted  a 
gloomier  though  more  consistent  form  of  the  old 
superstition,  or  yielded  only  to  the  eloquence  of 
an  inspired  apostle. 

But,  in  the  North,  such  arguments  could  be  dis- 
pensed with.  The  nations  of  Northern  Europe 
waited  not  for  a  reformer,  but  for  a  liberator ;  and, 
when  the  intellectual  support  of  a  few  prominent 
scholars  and  the  political  support  of  an  influential 
prince  had  given  Luther's  enterprise  the  least 
chance  of  success,  the  moral  support  of  the  people 
took  the  form  of  a  jubilant  uprising,  and  the 
Protestant  Revolt  broke  out  like  the  torrent  of 

earthly  father  at  all ;  that  a  serpeDt  spoke ;  that  from  that 
time  all  mankind  were  damned;  that  the  ass  of  Balaam 
also  spoke  with  great  eloquence;  and  that  the  walls  of 
Jericho  fell  down  at  the  sound  of  trumpets?'  Pico  thus 
proceeded  with  a  long  list  of  all  the  prodigious  things  in 
which  he  believed.  Alexander  absolutely  fell  back  upon 
his  sofa  with  laughing.  'I  had  better  believe  all  that  as 
well  as  you,'  says  he;  'for  I  well  know  that  I  can  be  saved 
only  by  faith,  as  I  can  certainly  never  be  so  by  works.' 
'Ah,  holy  father,'  says  Pico,  'you  need  neither  works  nor 
faith:  they  are  well  enough  for  such  poor  profane  creat- 
ures as  we  are;  but  you,  who  are  absolutely  a  vice-god, 
you  may  believe  and  do  just  whatever  you  please.  You 
have  the  keys  of  heaven,  and  St.  Peter  will  certainly  never 
shut  the  door  in  your  face.  But  as  for  myself,  who  am 
nothing  but  a  poor  prince,  I  freely  confess  that  I  should 
have  found  some  very  powerful  protection  necessary,  if  I 
had  employed  the  stiletto  and  nightshade  as  often  as  your 
holiness.'  Alexander  VI.  understood  raillery.  'Let  us 
speak  seriously,'  says  he  to  the  prince.  'Tell  me  what 
merit  there  can  be  in  a  man's  saying  to  God  that  he  is 
persuaded  of  things  of  which,  in 'fact,  he  cannot  be  per- 
suaded? What  pleasure  can  this  afford  to  God?  Between 
ourselves,  a  man  who  says  that  he  believes  what  is  impos- 
sible to  be  believed  is  a  humbug.'  Pico  de  Mirandola  at 
this  crossed  himself  in  great  agitation.  'Mi  Dio!'  says 
he,  'I  beg  your  Holiness'  pardon,  but  you  are  not  a  Chris- 
tian.' 'Upon  my  faith,'  says  the  Pope,  'I  am  not.' 
•That's  what  I  suspected,'  says' Pico  de  Mirandola." 


THE   PROTESTANT   REVOLT.  H3 

a  long-obstructed  river.  The  common  people  took 
little  interest  in  the  theological  subtleties  of  the 
dogmatic  controversy :  they  had  no  cause  to  hope 
that  the  doctrine  of  the  New  Testament  could  in 
any  degree  be  reconciled  with  human  reason ;  but, 
with  the  broad  instinct  of  self-preservation,  they 
seized  upon  the  main  fact  that  the  success  of  the 
insurrection  meant  liberation  from  the  thraldom 
of  an  intolerable  yoke.  Their  clear-seeing  men 
foresaw  that  the  wedge  which  now  divided  the 
power  of  the  Church  would  soon  split  it  into 
smaller  and  lighter  pieces:  they  felt  sure  that,  in 
the  course  of  time,  the  antiseptic  of  free  inquiry 
and  the  tonic  of  secular  pursuits  would  eradicate 
the  taint  of  anti-naturalism ;  and,  in  the  mean  time, 
they  accepted  the  dogmas  of  Luther  as  a  man 
accepts  the  cow-pox,— as  a  protection  from  the 
danger  of  a  more  horrible  disease. 

Martin  Luther  was  not  the  first  sect-founder 
who  builded  more  wisely  than  he  knew.  Pythag- 
oras, who  intended  to  introduce  the  superstition 
of  the  Hindu  Gnostics,  succeeded  only  in  reform- 
ing the  hygienic  habits  of  his  countrymen.  Mo- 
hammed, the  Unitarian  revivalist,-  was  inspired 
by  a  purely  religious  zeal.  He  recommended 
neither  physical  education  nor  the  culture  of  the 
intellectual  faculties,  but  he  was  wise  enough  at 
least  not  to  depreciate  them.  They  recommended 
themselves  as  means  to  his  ends ;  and,  a  hundred 
years  after  his  death,  the  civilization  of  Islam 
rivalled  the  culture  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Luther's 
chief  purpose  was  to  propagate  his  dogma  of  salva- 
tion by  faith,  etc.,  and  to  restore  the  theocracy  of 


114        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

the  early  Christian  churches ;  but,  before  he  could 
plant,  he  had  to  uproot,  and  this  weeding  of  the 
soil  revived  the  suppressed  germs  of  Naturalism 
and  Philosophy.  And  though,  like  Moses,  he 
called  himself  a  humble  servant  of  God,  it  is 
certain  that  neither  the  diatribes  of  Martial  and 
Demosthenes,  nor  the  philippics  of  Dan  ton,  Mira- 
beau,  and  Lord  Brougham,  have  ever  equalled  the 
tremendous  emphasis  of  his  invectives ;  and  to  this 
negative  preaching  he  owed  his  wonderful  popu- 
larity. 

"Freedom  awakened  in  every  breast"  ;*  the  mere 
rumor  of  the  first  success  gained  over  whole  cities 
and  provinces;  the  nations  of  the  North  flew  to 
arms,  like  the  old  Saxons  at  the  return  of  their 
heroic  chieftain;  Northern  Germany  became  the 
arena  of  an  international  war ;  and  after  a  struggle, 
in  which  the  very  earth  seemed  to  rise  in  defence 
of  her  children,  the  enemies  of  nature  were  over- 
powered: the  demon  of  the  Buddhistic  pest  had 
found  its  victor. 

The  leaders  of  the  Reformation  intended  a  Chris- 
tian-Patristic revival,  but  the  soul  of  its  success  was 
a  protest. 

*  Es  gereicht  den  alten  Deutschen  zum  Ruhm, 

Dass  sie  gehasst  das  Christenthum, 

Bis  Kaiser  Karolus  leidigem  Degen 

Die  edlen  Sachsen  unterlegen; 

Auch  haben  sie  lange  genug  gerungen, 

Bis  endlieh  die  Pfaffen  sie  bezwungen 

Und  sie  sich  unter's  Juch  geduckt: 

Auch  haben  sie  imraer  einmal  gemuckt. 

Auch  lagen  sie  nur  in  halbem  Schlaf 

Als  Luther  die  Bibel  verdeutscht  so  brav; 

St.  Paulus,  als  ein  Ritter  derb 

Erschien  den  Rittern  minder  herb: 

Freiheit  erwacht  in  jeder  Rrust; 

Wir  protestiren  alle  mit  Lust.—  Wolfgang  Goethe. 
(Recommended  to  the  translators  of  the  Goethe-worship- 
ping Concord  School  of  Christian  Philosophy.) 


CHAPTER  IX. 

REGENESIS. 

The  night  ends  with  storms;  yet  rejoice :  They  herald 
the  Morning.— Jean  Paul. 

The  history  of  Protestantism  is  the  history 
of  a  progressive  reform.  When  the  congress  of 
Westphalia  accepted  the  terms  of  the  Protestant 
princes,  the  power  of  anti-naturalism  received  its 
death-sentence;  for,  with  the  interests  of  the 
Christian  religion,  the  right  of  free  inquiry  is  as 
incompatible  as  sunlight  with  the  interests  of  an 
owl-association.  The  spectres  of  the  Middle  Ages 
are  fleeing  from  the  morning  air;  dogma  after 
dogma  has  silently  evanished  before  the  advance  of 
that  reform  of  which  the  Augsburg  Confession 
was  not  the  consummation,  but  the  beginning.  It 
is  probable  that  few  of  the  reformers  could  foresee 
the  consequences  of  the  movement  they  were  set- 
ting forward,  but  the  instinct  of  the  people  could 
not  be  deceived :  they  felt  the  true  import  of  the 
great  regenesis,  and  expressed  their  appreciation 
of  its  chief  fact  by  the  popular  name  of  the  cause 
of  Protestantism.  That  protest  has  been  repeated 
till  we  can  no  longer  doubt  that  its  causative  prin- 
ciple is  a  revival  of  naturalism.  The  abolition  of 
witchcraft  laws,  of  religious  disabilities  and  eccle- 
siastic privileges,  the  divorce  of  Church  and  State, 
secular  education,  civil  marriages,  our  newspaper 


116       THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

oracles,  lecture-bureaus  and  cyclopaedias,  our  re- 
publics, our  railways,  telegraphs,  telescopes  and 
electric  lights,  our  life  insurances  and  lightning 
conductors,  mechanics'  institutes  and  gymnasiums, 
our  zoological  gardens,  Sunday  excursions  and 
festivals  of  the  Turner-bund,  are  strange  com- 
ments on  the  theory  of  the  sages  who  ascribe  our 
superior  civilization  to  the  restoration  of  the  pa- 
tristic dogmas.  Anti-naturalism  was  not  only  the 
consequence,  but  the  cause  and  essence  of  those 
dogmas. 

The  ministers  of  pessimism  still  disregard  the 
signs  of  dawn,  or  mistake  them  for  the  reflection 
of  their  mystic  light;  but  they  cannot  help  per- 
ceiving that  the  demand  for  consecrated  candles 
has  alarmingly  decreased.  Their  didactic  func- 
tions have  been  intrusted  to  the  exponents  of 
secular  science ;  their  judicial  and  statistical  func- 
tions to  the  municipal  authorities;  their  tribunal 
of  public  censure  has  been  surrendered  to  the 
public  press ;  and  the  very  foundation  of  their 
spiritual  authority  has  been  undermined  by  the 
agencies  of  that  ominous  phase  in  the  decadence 
of  a  creed  which  drives  its  ablest  champions  into 
the  camp  of  the  opposition.  Two  hundred  years 
ago,  a  considerable  plurality  of  our  educated  cler- 
gymen would  have  been  burned  as  heretics;  and 
the  veil  of  external  forms  can  hardly  disguise  the 
fact  that  the  doctrine  now  preached  in  the  city 
churches  of  the  progressive  nations  is  neither 
Romanism  nor  Calvinism,  but  eclectic  casuistry. 
The  signs  of  a  progressing  change  are,  indeed, 
getting  distinct  enough  to  be  visible  even  through 


REGENESIS.  117 

the  painted  windows  of  the  Roman  cathedrals. 
The  tenure  of  the  infallible  Church  is  in  litiga- 
tion; her  drafts  on  heaven  are  sadly  below  par; 
her  Hades  has  changed  its  climate,  as  well  as  its 
name.  The  plan  of  pressing  science  into  the 
service  of  dogmatism  has  only  hastened  the  prog- 
ress of  disintegration.  Nature  cannot  be  fought 
with  her  own  weapons;  by  just  as  much  as  her 
enemies  increase  the  knowledge  of  their  disciples, 
they  decrease  their  orthodoxy;  the  ministers  of 
darkness  try  in  vain  to  utilize  the  electric  lights 
of  civilization. 

Yet  the  church  of  natural  religion  is  still  a 
militant  church.  Pessimism  is  fighting  its  last 
battle  with  bitter  obstinacy.  The  aggressive  agen* 
cies  of  the  Galilean  Church  have  become  obstruct- 
ive elements.  The  roars  of  the  bestia  trionfante 
have  been  silenced;  the  open  war  against  truth 
has  ceased,  but  her  enemies  still  maintain  a  de- 
fensive warfare;  such  plain  duties  toward  our 
fellow-men  as  the  exposure  of  superstition  and 
hypocrisy  are  still  denounced  as  crimes  against 
the  majesty  of  our  God.  Monks  and  Puritans 
have  ceased  to  enforce  the  worship  of  sorrow,  but 
their  influence  still  prevents  the  worship  of  joy; 
the  poison  of  asceticism  still  blights  our  festivals ; 
the  love  of  earth  is  still  a  stigma.  The  Stylites 
have  descended  from  their  columns;  self-mutila- 
tion and  self-torture  have  ceased  their  work  of 
degeneration;  but  the  regenerating  influence  of 
physical  education  has  not  yet  been  recognized; 
even  in  America,  we  have  a  hundred  mythology 
schools  for  one  gymnasium.    Like  the  deities  of 


118        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EA8T. 

the  Roman  Empire,  the  gods  of  pessimism  have 
lost  their  thunder ;  their  butcher-priests  have  been 
disarmed,  but  their  temples  still  cumber  the  land ; 
the  embers  of  their  altar-fires  still  cloud  the  sky 
with  their  murky  fumes. 

Yet  the  rising  sun  will  soon  dissipate  those 
clouds.  Our  pilgrimage  to  the  land  of  regenera- 
tion is  not  yet  finished ;  but  the  light  of  the  new 
day  has  at  least  brought  to  view  the  goal  of  our 
journey,  and  will  help  us  to  avoid  the  obstacles  of 
our  path.  The  night-spectres  flee.  The  morning 
sun  begins  to  reveal  the  true  form  of  the  vampire 
whose  loathsome  embrace  has  sapped  the  life-blood 
of  the  last  hundred  generations.  The  demon  of 
pessimism  will  not  long  hide  his  ghastly  face  under 
the  guise  of  a  heavenly  messenger.  One  by  one, 
his  masks  have  dropped ;  and  the  hour  of  deliver- 
ance is  near,  when  the  hand  of  science  shall  lift 
the  veil  of  the  Perversion-fallacy, — the  last  sophism 
that  still  enables  the  Galilean  Church  to  deprecate 
the  odium  of  their  crimes  against  the  happiness  of 
the  human  race.  The  outrages  against  the  friends 
of  science  and  freedom,  they  say,  were  the  conse- 
quences of  a  perverted  creed,  while  the  founders  of 
that  creed  inveighed  only  against  earthly  desires, 
against  unbelief,  against  the  love  of  wealth,  of 
sensual  enjoyments,  and  worldly  honors.  "I  did 
not  destroy  the  flowers  and  fruits  of  the  tree,"  says 
the  fatuous  gardener :  "I  merely  aimed  my  blows  at 
the  base  roots." 

The  dupes  of  the  perversion-fallacy  see  the  con- 
trast between  the  lowly  beginning  and  the  out- 
rageous consequences  of  anti-naturalism,  but  they 


REGENESIS.  H9 

fail  to  trace  the  inevitable  sequence  of  cause  and 
effect.  They  fail  to  see  that  the  withering  of  the 
earthly  roots  of  human  life  will  equally  blight  the 
highest  flowers  of  the  spirit.  They  fail  to  see  that 
decrepitude  begets  cowardice,  meanness,  and  du- 
plicity; that  destitution  is  a  worse  tempter  than 
affluence ;  that  non-resistance  leads  to  slavery ;  that 
blind  faith  opens  the  door  to  imposture ;  that  the 
neglect  of  terrestrial  affairs  leads  to  moral  and 
intellectual  as  well  as  material  bankruptcy;  that 
the  spirit  sickens  with  the  body.  They  fail  to  see 
that  a  noble  mind  is  a  flower  of  which  physical 
health  is  the  stem  and  the  root. 

The  New  Testament,  in  fact,  contains  all  the 
seeds  of  the  insane  dogmas  that  turned  the  world 
of  the  Middle  Ages  into  a  mad-house.  Not  the 
outcome  only,  but  the  very  source  of  the  Galilean 
creed  is  an  earth-blighting  superstition.  And, 
wherever  the  tendencies  of  our  so-called  Christian 
civilization  have  led  to  health  and  happiness,  it 
proves  that  we  have  left  the  age  of  St.  Augustine 
very  far  behind.  It  proves  that  the  doctrine  of 
pessimism  has  become  untenable,  that  our  earth 
has  awakened  from  the  fever-dream  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  that  the  healing  powers  of  nature  have  at 
last  prevailed  against  the  most  terrible  disease  of 
the  human  race. 

For  a  large  number  of  our  contemporaries,  the 
day  of  deliverance  has  already  arrived  ;  but  no  one 
deserves  his  liberty  who  does  not  contribute  his 
share  to  the  emancipation  of  his  fellow-men.  The 
bigotry  of  a  besotted  fanatic  is  hardly  more  con- 
temptible than   the    cautious    selfishness    of   the 


120        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

man  who  silently  enjoys  the  sweet  air  of  freedom 
while  thousands  of  his  brethren  sicken  in  the  dun- 
geon of  anti-naturalism.  The  agnostic  and  apathic 
creed  of  science  must  become  a  positive  religion. 
The  energy  which  we  owe  to  the  fear  of  disease 
should  be  inspired  by  the  love  of  health.  Before 
the  end  of  this  century,  the  protest  against  the 
enemies  of  nature  should  consummate  its  triumph 
in  a  gospel  of  earthly  happiness.  Religion  must 
cease  to  be  a  synonyme  of  hypocrisy. 

The  Religion  of  the  Future  will  dispense  with 
stakes  and  torture-chambers.  It  will  employ  no 
weapons  but  logic,  no  inquisition  but  the  inquiry 
after  truth.  It  will  appeal  to  no  higher  canon  than 
the  progressive  revelation  of  science.  All  the  think- 
ers, discoverers,  and  reformers  who  were  the  ene- 
mies of  religion  will  become  its  missionaries.  Its 
work  of  redemption  will  not  be  achieved  by  the 
suppression,  but  by  the  encouragement  of  free  in- 
quiry ;  not  by  the  renunciation,  but  by  the  promo- 
tion of  temporal  happiness;  not  by  ghost-stories 
and  self-torture,  but  by  natural  science,  Olympic 
festivals,  outdoor  life,  social  and  educational  re- 
forms, desert-redeeming  forest  culture,  gymnastics, 
and  health-schools.  The  path  of  its  victory  will 
not  lead  over  the  trampled  flowers  of  this  earth. 
The  religion  of  nature  will  dispense  with  miracles. 
It  will  heal  the  sick  by  teaching  them  to  avoid  the 
causes  of  disease.  It  will  help  the  poor  by  increas- 
ing their  means  of  self-help :  it  will  still  their  hun- 
ger after  happiness  with  better  fare  than  litanies 
and  consecrated  wafers. 

We  may  keep  our  altars ;  but  the  priests  of  the 


REGENESIS.  121 

future  will  not  require  the  sacrifice  of  our  reason, 
of  our  freedom  and  our  natural  affections,  and 
will  not  reject  an  honest  votary,  though  he  should 
decline  to  hate  his  father  and  mother, — yea,  and 
his  own  life.  We  shall  worship  our  God  in  the 
temple  of  nature;  and,  if  Paradise  can  be  re- 
gained, we  shall  try  to  enjoy  it  on  this  side  of  the 
grave. 


APPENDIX. 


Indian  Sources  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  study  of  Comparative  Mythology  has  estab- 
lished the  rule  that  the  metastasis  of  myths  con- 
fines itself  to  a  descending  line  of  transmission. 
The  attributes,  doings,  and  sayings  of  national 
numina  are  transferred  from  gods  to  heroes,  from 
heroes  and  demigods  to  favorite  saints  and  politi- 
cal leaders,  from  exuberant  and  popular  religions 
to  inchoate  and  aspiring  creeds.  Sarama,  the 
Spirit  of  the  Dawn,  becomes  a  Grecian  Helena; 
the  stronghold  of  the  night-gods  shrinks  to  a 
Mysian  city;  Wodan,  with  his  celestial  compan- 
ions, descends  to  the  vault  of  a  German  castle  or 
rides  the  storm-cloud  through  the  midnight  woods. 
A  mythical  hero  of  ancient  Iran  sinks  to  a  Danish 
warrior,  and  finally  to  a  Swiss  peasant ;  Venus  be- 
comes a  lamia ;  Hertha,  the  earth-goddess,  a  nurs- 
ery witch.  Conquered  nations  degrade  their  old 
idols,  if  they  cannot  preserve  them  on  better  terms. 
The  priests  and  devotees  of  a  newly  promoted 
Olympian  try  to  establish  his  claim  by  identifying 
him  with  a  deity  of  superior  rank. 

It  is  therefore  not  probable  that  the  Krishna- 
tradition  was  transferred  directly  from  Brahmanism 
to  Christianity.    Long  before  the  advent  of  the 


APPENDIX.  123 

Galilean  avatar,  Krishna,  the  heaven-born  lover  of 
the  milkmaids,  had  ceased  to  be  the  centre  of  a 
special  worship,  Buddhism  had  reacted  on  Brah- 
manism  as  the  doctrine  of  Luther  had  reacted  on 
the  Catholic  religion:  It  had  forced  the  older 
creed  to  relinquish  its  exuberant  myths,  and  re- 
treat to  the  stronghold  of  its  essential  dogmas. 
Those  portious  of  the  Krishna  legend  which  have 
blended  with  our  gospel  myths  were  probably 
transmitted  through  the  medium  of  Buddhism, 
and,  being  confined  chiefly  to  the  infancy  traditions 
of  the  two  Messiahs,  have  no  ethical  importance 
whatever. 

Of  far  different  significance  is  the  concordance 
of  Christianity  and  Buddhism.  The  character  and 
the  astounding  number  of  their  analogies  not  only 
reveal  the  genesis  of  the  Christian  myths,  but 
also  elucidate  numerous  otherwise  obscure  pas- 
sages in  the  parables  and  ethical  precepts  of  the 
New  Testament,  and  thus  confirm  the  intrinsic 
proofs  of  its  extra-Hebraic  origin  and  its  pessimis- 
tic tendency. 

The  chronological  subterfuge  of  the  Christian 
apologists  has  been  effectually  disposed  of.  It  had 
been  supposed  that  the  Lalita  Vistara,  the  chief 
compend  of  the  Buddha  legend,  was  a  Cingalese 
romance  of  comparatively  recent  date,  and  that  its 
compilers  might  have  availed  themselves  of  West- 
Asiatic  traditions.  But  the  researches  of  Burnouf, 
Wassiljew,  Koppen,  Max  Miiller,  Seydel,  Julien, 
and  Plath  have  most  incontestably  established  the 
fact  that  Cingalese  Buddhism,  though  a  younger 
branch  of    the  great  Indian   religion,   has   more 


124         THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

faithfully  than  the  northern  sects  preserved  the 
original  traditions  of  the  Buddha  Bible,  and  that 
the  canonical  recognition  of  the  Lalita  Vistara — 
not  to  mention  the  period  of  its  development — far 
ante-dates  those  of  the  Christian  gospels.  Stan- 
islas Julien  proved  by  an  ancient  Chinese  cata- 
logue of  the  Kaygur  scriptures  that  the  Lalita  was 
one  of  the  books  which  in  the  first  century  of  our 
chronological  era  were  translated  from  the  old 
Indian  originals,  and  that  therefore,  even  at  that 
early  period,  the  Lalita  was  included  among  the 
canonical  books  of  Buddhism.  Besides,  many  of 
the  most  suggestive  passages  of  the  Cingalese 
gospel  are  found  already  in  the  Thibetan  Hinay- 
dnasj  which  more  than  two  centuries  before  Christ 
had  taken  rank  among  the  sacred  scriptures  of  the 
northern  Buddhists.  Plath  demonstrates  that  230 
B.C.  the  Hinaydnas  had  already  assumed  their 
present  form.  Prof.  Rudolph  Seydel,  the  learned 
Christian  apologist,  admits  that  the  canonical 
recognition  of  the  Lalita  cannot  be  assigned  to  a 
later  period  than  twenty  years  after  the  birth  of 
Christ.  "But  what  would  it  avail  us,"  he  adds, 
"to  postpone  that  date  to  the  uttermost  limit  of 
possibility  ?  We  could  not  make  it  less  incredible 
that  the  Buddhists  should  have  copied  from  the 
legends  of  a  creed  which  was  then  only  in  its 
cradle,  and  whose  traditions  had  not  even  begun 
to  crystallize  into  fixed  forms." — (Das  Evangehum 
von  Jesu,  p.  79,  Leipzig,  1882.) 

Especially  since  Buddhism  was  then  in  the  very 
zenith  of  its  vigor.  The  homage  which  the  Jews, 
Christians,  and  Mohammedans  have  paid  to  the 


APPENDIX.  125 


founders  of  their  religions,  is  frigid,  compared  with 
the  fervor  of  devotional  enthusiasm  which  gathered 
about  the  person  of  Buddha  Sakyamuni.    In  Ceylon, 
the   name  of   Gautama  has    twelve  thousand  syn- 
onymes.     Compared  with  the  self-tortures  of  the 
Buddhistic  anchorites,  the  askesis  of  the  Chris- 
tian monks  looks  like  self-indulgence.    Millions  of 
Buddhistic  laymen  devoted  a  tenth  part  of  every 
day  to  the  study  of  their  sacred  scriptures,  and 
committed  whole  books  and  chronicles  to  memory. 
And  shall  we  believe    that  the   priests   of   that 
religion-a  religion  which  then  counted  its  con- 
verts  by  hundreds    of    millions,  and   was    daily 
preached  from  many  hundred  thousand  pulpits- 
dared  to  adulterate  their  gospel  with  the  traditions 
of  a  creed  which,  from  their  point  of  view,  was 
professed  only  by  a  small  sect  of  a  contemptible 
and  ignorant  mountain  tribe  of  Western   Syria  ? 
Suppose  that  the  English  translator  of  the  Vulgate 
had  tried  his  hand  at  a  mediaeval  romance  :  would 
any  Protestant  sect  have  attempted  to  enrich  the 
New  Testament  with  the  adventures  of  Sir  Lance- 
lot du  Lac  ?    And  can  we  believe  that  the  Cingalese, 
the  most  orthodox  sect  of  Buddhism,  have  thus 
tampered  with  the  sacred  canon  of  their  Hinayana 
gospel?    It  would  not  be  more  absurd  if  a  thou- 
sand years  hence  a  student  of  comparative  mythol- 
ogy should  assert  that    our   new  version  of  the 
Scriptures  had  been  borrowed  from  the  writings  of 
Joseph  Smith,  or  that  the  chronicle  of  the  wars 
and  adventures  of  Mohammed  were  a  mere  para- 
phrase of  Voltaire's  drama. 

On  the  other  hand,  no  circumstance  in  ancient 


126        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

history  is  more  clearly  established  thaii  the  fact 
that,  before  the  appearance  of  Christ,  Buddhistic 
traditions  and  Buddhistic  missionaries  had  reached 
the  land  of  the  Mediterranean  nations.     Like  all 
great  movements  in  the  history  of   the  human 
race,  Buddhism  at  first  advanced  toward  the  setting 
sun,  and  only  the  recoil  of  its  westward  tide  led  to 
the  inundation  of  Eastern  Asia.    Long  before  China 
and  Siam  were  brought  under  the  sway  of  the 
"Word,"  Buddhistic    colonies   had  been  planted 
beyond  the  Indus.     Spiegel's  translation  of  the 
Five  Gathas  and  Taranatha's  History  of  Buddhism 
(translated  by  Wassiljew)  mention  Buddhistic  mis- 
sions in  Western  Persia  during  the  reign  of  Arta- 
xerxes  Longomanus  (about  B.C.  450).     Alexander 
Polyhistor  describes  the  ascetic  practices  of  Buddh- 
istic monks  in  Bactria,  and  speaks  of  self-tortur- 
ing hermits  and  mendicant  orders;  while  in  the 
Thirteenth  Edict  of  Girnar,  King  Asoka,  the  "Con- 
stantine  of  Buddhism,"  refers  to  missionary  em- 
bassies sent  to  the  Y6na  (Ionian  or  Greek)  kings, 
Antiochus,    Ptolemaus,    Antigonus,    and    Magas. 
Under    the    reign    of    Artaxerxes    Mnemon,  the 
Grecian    philosopher    Ktesias    gathered    a    large 
amount  of  curious  information  about  India  and 
Indian  religions;  and   the  historian  Aristoxenos, 
a  contemporary  of  Alexander  the  Great,  mentions 
an  Indian  magus  who  visited  Socrates  and  other 
philosophers— probably  Pythagoreans — whose  doc- 
trine of  metempsychosis  and  abstinence  from  wine 
and  animal  food  indicates  an  East  Indian  origin. 
When  Alexander  the  Great  returned  to  Persia,  the 
Indian  ascetic  Calanos  accompanied  him  to  Per- 


APPENDIX. 


127 


sepolis,  and  burned  himself  at  the  stake  to  demon- 
strate his  indifference  to  earthly  existence.     Two 
hundred  years  before  Christ,  the  city  of  Alassada, 
near  the  sources  of  the  Oxus,  was  a  central  point 
of  the  West  Buddhistic  propaganda.     The  con- 
quests of  Alexander  established  a  constant  inter- 
course between  the  Mediterranean  and  the  western 
cities  of  Central  Asia,  caravans  travelled  to  and 
fro,  the  Grecian  colonists  were  probably  as  tolerant 
as  their  western  countrymen,  and  the  zealous  mis- 
sionaries  of    the   Cashmere    convent    towns    can 
hardly  have  failed  to  avail  themselves  of  such 
favorable  opportunities.  Clemens  Alexandrinus,  St. 
Jerome,  and   Suidas  speak  of  a  deified  "Butta." 
Pliny  (H.  N*.  37,  11)  refers  to  the  large  overland 
trade  between  India  and  Cappadocia;  i.e.,  between 
the  stronghold  of  Buddhism  and  a  region  which 
swarmed  with  Greeks,  Jews,  and  the  early  prose- 
lytes  of  Christianity.     The  same  historian  (H.  N. 
VI.,  19,  22,  26)  records  the  fact  that  the  commerce 
by  sea  between  India  and  Europe  drained  the 
Roman  Empire  of  a  yearly  sum  of  fifty  million 
sesterces,  and  that  Indian  ships  with  accommoda 
tion  for  five  hundred  passengers  with  their  bag- 
gage and  merchandise  landed  every  year  at  Alex- 
andria and   Syracuse.     Among  the  ambassadors 
whom  King  Poros,  or  Paurava,  sent  to  the  court  of 
Augustus,  there  was  the  Buddhist  Zarmanochegas 
(Sramanacharya,  i.e.,  teacher  of  Sramana,  the  doc- 
trine of  self -mortification),  who  afterward  went  to 
Athens,  and,  like  Calanos,  burned  himself  on  a 
funeral  pyre  to  attest  his  belief  in  the  worthlessness 
of  earthly  life. 


128  THE    SECRET   OF   THE   EAST. 

II. 
Concordance  of  Buddhism  and  Christianity. 

A.    TRADITIONAL   ANALOGIES. 

1.  Both  Buddha  and  Christ  were  of  royal  line- 
age. Both  were  born  of  a  mother  who,  though 
married,  was  still  a  virgin. 

2.  Both  virgin  mothers  were  overshadowed  by 
the  Holy  Ghost,  and,  though  found  with  child, 
remained  immaculate. 

3.  The  birth  of  the  future  Saviour  is  announced 
by  a  heavenly  messenger.  The  apparition  which 
Maya  sees  in  her  dream  informs  her :  "Thou  shalt 
be  filled  with  highest  joy.  Behold,  thou  shalt  bring 
forth  a  son  bearing  the  mystic  signs  of  Buddh,  a 
scion  of  royal  lineage,  a  son  of  highest  kings. 
When  he  shall  leave  his  kingdom  and  his  country 
to  enter  the  state  of  devotion,  he  shall  become  a 
sacrifice  for  the  dwellers  of  earth,  a  Buddha  who  to 
all  men  shall  give  joy  and  the  glorious  fruits  of 
immortality."     (Jtgya  Cher-rol-pan,  61,  63.) 

The  angel  says  unto  Mary :  "Fear  not,  Mary, 
for  thou  hast  found  favor  with  God.  And  behold 
thou  shalt  bring  forth  a  son  and  call  his  name 
Jesus.  He  shall  be  great,  and  shall  be  called  the 
Son  of  the  Highest ;  and  the  Lord  God  shall  give 
unto  him  the  throne  of  his  father  David."  (Luke 
i.,  30,  31.) 

4.  At  the  request  of  Maya,  King  Sudodhana  re- 
nounces his  connubial  rights  till  she  has  brought 
forth  her  first  son.  (Rgya,  69-82.)  "And  Joseph 
knew  her  not  till  she  had  brought  forth  her  first 
son."     (Matt,  i.,  25  ;  Luke  L,  39-56.) 


APPENDIX.  129 

5.  The  immortals  of  the  Tushita-heaven  decide 
that  Buddha  shall  be  born  when  the  "Flower-star" 
makes  its  first  appearance  in  the  east.  (Lefmann, 
21, 124 ;  Wassiljew,  p.  95.)  "Where  is  he  that  is 
born  king  of  the  Jews  ?  for  we  have  seen  his  star 
in  the  east."    (Matt,  ii.,  2.) 

6.  A  host  of  angelic  messengers  descends  and 
announces  tidings  of  great  joy :  "A  hero,  glorious 
and  incomparable,  has  been  born,  a  Saviour  unto 
all  nations  of  the  earth  1  A  deliverer  has  brought 
joy  and  peace  to  heaven  and  earth."  (Lotus,  102, 
104.  Rgya,  89,  97.)  "And  the  angel  said  unto 
them,  Fear  not ;  for,  behold,  I  bring  you  good  tid- 
ings of  great  joy  which  shall  be  to  all  people.  .  . . 
For  unto  you  is  born  this  day  a  Saviour."  (Luke 
ii.,  9.) 

7.  Princes  and  wise  Brahmans  appear  with  gifts, 
and  worship  the  child  Buddha.  (Rgya,  97,  113.) 
"And  when  they  were  come  into  the  house,  they 
saw  the  young  child  and  worshipped  him ;  . .  .  and 
they  presented  unto  him  gifts,  gold  and  frankin- 
cense and  myrrh."     (Matt,  ii.,  11.) 

8.  The  Brahmin  Asita,  to  whom  the  Spirit  has 
revealed  the  advent  of  Buddh,  descends  from  his 
hermitage  on  Himalaya  to  see  the  new-born  child. 
He  predicts  the  coming  kingdom  of  heaven  and 
Buddha's  mission  to  save  and  enlighten  the  world. 
(Sutta-Nipatha,  iii.,  11 ;  Buddhist  Birth  Stories, 
i.,  69.)  "And  it  was  revealed  unto  him  by  the 
Holy  Ghost  that  he  should  not  see  death  before  he 
had  seen  the  Lord's  Christ.  .  .  .  Then  he  took 
him  up  in  his  arms,  and  blessed  God,  and  said, 
Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace. 


130  THE    SECRET   OF    THE    EAST. 

.  .  .  For  mine  eyes  have  seen  thy  salvation.  ...  A 
light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles,  and  the  glory  of  thy 
people  Israel."     (Luke  ii.,  26.) 

9.  Hymnic  Intermezzos. — The  Gospel  of  Luke, 
like  the  Lalita  Vistara,  abounds  with  hymnic  rhap- 
sodies, which  in  the  parallel  passages  of  the  Buddh- 
istic original  harmonize  with  the  spirit  of  the  epic  ; 
while,  in  the  Christian  chronicle,  their  abrupt  in- 
troduction suggests  omissions  and  arbitrary  selec- 
tions. (Luke  i.,  13-17,  30-33,  35,  42-45,  46-55, 
67-79;  ii.,  10-14,  29-32,  34,  38;  xix.,  37.) 

10.  The  Abhinish-Kramana  Sutra  relates  that 
the  king  of  Maghada  instructed  one  of  his  minis- 
ters to  institute  an  inquiry  whether  any  inhabitant 
of  the  kingdom  could  possibly  become  powerful 
enough  to  endanger  the  safety  of  the  throne.  Two 
spies  are  sent  out.  One  of  them  ascertains  the 
birth  of  Buddha,  his  tribe  and  dwelling-place,  and 
the  promise  of  his  future  glory.  He  makes  his 
report  to  the  king,  and  advises  him  to  take  meas- 
ures to  exterminate  the  tribe.    (Cf.  Matt,  ii.,  1-11.) 

11.  The  Presentation  in  the  Temple. —  The 
princes  of  the  Sakya  tribe  urge  the  king  to  present 
(or  introduce)  his  son  in  a  public  assembly  of 
nobles  and  priests.  Spirits  accompany  the  march 
of  the  procession  ;  inspired  prophets  extol  the  fut- 
ure greatness  of  the  Messiah.  The  parallel  story 
of  Luke  supplies  the  motive  of  the  ceremony  with 
the  words:  "As  it  is  written  in  the  law  of  the 
Lord."  But  diligent  comparison  of  the  sources 
of  Hebrew  law  has  revealed  the  fact  that  no  such 
ordinance  ever  existed.  The  rite  of  purification 
merely  required  the  mother  to  offer  up  a  sacrifice, 


APPENDIX.  131 

a  ceremony  which  demanded  neither  the  presence 
of  the  husband  nor  of  the  child,  the  motive  of 
the  narrator's  fiction  being  evidently  the  necessity 
of  fitting  the  incident  into  a  frame  of  Hebrew 
customs. 

12.  Names  and  Titles. — Among  the  twelve  chief 
names  of  Buddha, — the  Word,  the  All-wise,  the 
Messiah,  the  Way,  the  Awakened,  the  Saviour,  the 
Intercessor,  the  Truth,  the  Life,  the  Prince  of 
Peace,  the  Good  Shepherd,  the  Light  of  the  World, 
— all  but  the  second  and  fifth  have  been  applied  to 
the  Prophet  of  Nazareth. 

13.  Buddha's  parents  miss  the  boy  one  day;  and, 
after  searching  for  him  far  and  near,  they  find  him 
in  an  assembly  of  Rishis  (sages  of  the  past),  who 
listen  to  his  discourse  and  marvel  at  his  under- 
standing. (Birth  Stories,  74  ;  Plath,  xii.,  2.)  "And 
when  they  found  him  not,  they  turned  back  again 
to  Jerusalem,  seeking  him.  And  it  came  to  pass 
that,  after  three  days,  they  found  him  in  the  temple, 
sitting  in  the  midst  of  the  doctors,  both  hearing 
them  and  asking  them  questions.  And  all  that 
heard  him  were  astonished  at  his  understanding 
and  answers."     (Luke  ii.,  45-47.) 

14.  Buddha,  before  entering  upon  his  mission, 
meets  the  B  rah  mine  Rudraka,  a  mighty  preacher, 
who,  however,  offers  to  become  his  disciple.  Some 
of  Rudraka's  followers  secede  to  Buddha,  but  leave 
him  when  they  find  that  he  does  not  observe  the 
fasts.  (Rgya,  178,  214.)  Jesus,  before  entering 
upon  his  mission,  meets  John  the  Baptist,  who  rec- 
ognizes his  superiority.  Two  of  John's  disciples 
follow  Jesus,  who  states  his  reasons  for  rejecting 


132        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

John's  rigid  observance  of  the  fasts.     (John  i., 
37.) 

15.  Buddha  retires  to  the  solitude  of  Uruvilva, 
and  fasts  and  prays  in  the  desert  till  hunger  forces 
him  to  leave  his  retreat.  (Rgya,  364 ;  Oldenberg's 
Mahdvagga,  p.  116.)  "Then  was  Jesus  led  up  of  the 
Spirit  into  the  wilderness,  to  be  tempted  by  the 
devil.  And,  when  he  had  fasted  forty  days  and  forty 
nights,  he  was  afterwards  a-hungered."  (Matt,  iv.,  1. 

16.  After  finishing  his  fast,  Buddha  takes  a  bath 
in  the  river  Nairanjana.  When  he  leaves  the 
water,  purified,  the  devas  open  the  gates  of  heaven, 
and  cover  him  with  a  shower  of  fragrant  flowers. 
(Rgya,  259.)     Comp.  Matt,  iii.,  13. 

17.  The  Temptation. — During  Buddha's  fast  in 
the  desert,  Mara,  the  Prince  of  Darkness,  ap- 
proaches him,  and  tempts  him  with  promises  of 
wealth  and  earthly  glory.  Buddha  rejects  his  pro- 
posals by  quoting  passages  of  the  Vedas.  The 
tempter  flees :  angels  descend  and  salute  Buddha. 
(Mara:  Ktippen,  i.,  88;  Dhammapadam,  vii.,  33.) 
"And  said  unto  him,  All  these  things  will  I  give 
thee,  if  thou  wilt  fall  down  and  worship  me. 
Then  Jesu3  saith  unto  him,  Get  thee  hence,  Satan  ; 
for  it  is  written,  Thou  shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy 
God,  and  him  only  shalt  thou  serve.  Then  the 
devil  leaveth  him,  and,  behold,  angels  came  and 
ministered  unto  him."     (Matt,  iv.,  9-11.) 

18.  Precursors. — During  the  transfiguration  on 
the  mountain,  Christ  is  joined  by  Moses  and  Elias. 
Sakyamuni  has  frequent  interviews  with  the  two 
Buddhas  who  preceded  him.     (Seydel,  163.) 

19.  Under  the  Fig-tree. — The  shade  of  the  sacred 


APPENDIX.  133 

fig-tree  that  shelters  the  meditating  Buddha  is  the 
scene  of  the  conversion  and  ordination  of  the  first 
disciples,  formerly  followers  of  Rudraka.  Christ 
chooses  his  first  disciples  from  among  the  former 
followers  of  the  Baptist;  and  in  John  i.,  48,  his 
remark  about  a  fig-tree  appears  wholly  incongruous 
and  irrelevant  to  the  context.  In  the  answer  of 
Nathan ael,  the  circumstance  of  having  been  seen 
under  a  fig-tree  is  accepted  as  a  proof  of  Christ's 
messiahship ! 

20.  Disciples. — Before  Buddha  appoints  a  larger 
number  of  apostles,  he  selects  five  favorite  disci- 
ples, one  of  whom  is  afterward  styled  the  pillar  of 
the  Faith ;  another,  the  bosom-friend  of  Buddha. 
Before  Christ  selects  his  twelve  apostles,  he  chooses 
five  chief  disciples,  among  them  Peter,  the  "rock 
of  the  Church,"  and  John,  his  favorite  follower. 
Among  the  followers  of  Buddha  there  is  a  Judas, 
Devadatta,  who  tries  to  betray  his  master,  and 
meets  a  disgraceful  death.  (Koppen,  i.,  94 ;  Lef- 
mann,  51 ;  Birth  Stories,  p.  113.) 

21.  Sakyamuni  alludes  to  an  interview  with 
several  former  Buddhas.  Sceptics  question  his 
statement:  "Only  forty  years  ago,  you  left  your 
native  town :  how  can  you  claim  to  have  seen  all 
those  saints  of  old?"  Buddha  explains  it  by  the 
pre-existence  of  his  soul  in  other  forms.  (Lotus, 
xiv.  and  xv.)  "Then  said  the  Jews  unto  him, 
Thou  art  not  yet  fifty  years  old,  and  hast  thou 
seen  Abraham?"     (John  viii.,  57.) 

22.  The  Macarisms. — The  first  words  of  Christ 
are  the  macarisms  (blessings)  in  the  Sermon  of 
the  Mount.     When  Buddha  enters  upon  his  mis- 


134        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

sion,  he  begins  a  public  speech  (according  to  the 
French  translation  of  Rgya,  355)  :  "Celui  qui  a 
entendu  la  Loi,  celui  qui  voit,  celui  qui  se  platt 
dans  la  solitude,  est  heureux;  lid  (a  l'existence)  au 
milieu  des  creatures  vivantes,  et  ne  faisant  pas  de 
mal,  il  est  heureux  dans  le  monde.  Parvenu  a  se 
mettre  au-dessus  des  vices,  exempt  des  passions, 
il  est  heureux;  celui  qui  a  dompte'  l'dgoisme  et 
Porgueil  est  parvenu  h  la  supreme  felicite." 

23.  Buddha  remains  homeless  and  poor;  re- 
peatedly instructs  his  disciples  to  travel  without 
money,  and  trust  to  the  aid  of  Providence.  (Comp. 
Matt,  iv.,  23  ;  viii.,  20.) 

24.  Ananda,  Buddha's  favorite  disciple,  at  the 
end  of  a  wearisome  journey,  sits  down  near  a 
well.  A  woman  of  the  despised  caste  of  the  Chan- 
dalas  appears  with  a  water-jug.  Ananda  asks  her 
for  a  drink  of  water.  The  woman  warns  him  that 
he  will  lose  caste  by  persisting  in  his  request. 
Ananda  laughs  at  her  scruples ;  and,  while  they 
argue  the  question,  Buddha  comes  up  and  approves 
the  view  of  Ananda,  who,  as  he  perceives,  has  found 
favor  in  the  eyes  of  the  woman.  (Burnouf's 
Divya-Avaddna.)  Comp.  John  iv.,  1-20.  "He 
whom  thou  now  hast  is  not  thy  husband." 

25.  If  thy  right  eye  offends  thee,  pluck  it  out 
and  cast  it  from  thee.  (Matt,  v.,  29.)  According 
to  Max  Muller's  translation  of  the  Ocean  of 
Legends,  a  young  monk  of  the  mendicant  order 
meets  a  rich  woman  who  pities  his  hard  lot,  and 
wonders  what  could  induce  him  to  renounce  the 
world.  "Blessed  is  the  woman,"  says  she,  "who 
looks  into  thy  lovely  eyes."    "Lovely?"   says  the 


APPENDIX.  135 

monk.  "Look  here."  And,  plucking  out  one  of  his 
eyes,  he  holds  it  up,  bleeding  and  ghastly,  and  asks 
her  to  correct  her  opinion. 

26.  Miracles.— Buddha  walks  on  the  Ganges,  as 
Christ  on  the  lake.  He  heals  the  sick  by  a  mere 
touch  of  his  hand ;  and,  according  to  Wassiljew, 
the  Mayana-Sutra  relates  the  miracle  of  the  loaves 
and  fishes.  Buddha  repeatedly  has  a  miraculous 
escape  from  the  snares  of  his  adversaries.  "But 
he,  going  through  the  midst  of  them,  went  his 
way."  (Luke  iv.,  30.)  A  transfiguration,  ascen- 
sion, speaking  in  foreign  tongues,  are  additional 
parallels.  Buddha  descends  to  hell,  and  preaches 
to  the  spirits  of  the  damned. 

27.  In  the  story  of  the  blind  man  (John  ix.),  the 
disciples  ask:  "Who  did  sin,— this  man  or  his 
parents?"  The  meaning  of  the  question  is  re- 
vealed by  the  Buddhistic  parable  of  a  wilfully  blind 
(obstinate)  heretic,  whose  perversity  is  caused  by 
his  sins  in  a  former  existence.  {Lotus,  82.)  For, 
in  the  version  of  the  gospel,  the  guilt  of  a  man  born 
blind  could  hardly  be  alleged  as  a  cause  of  his 
misfortune ;  while,  in  the  Buddhistic  original,  the 
idea  is  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  doctrine  of 
metempsychosis. 

28.  Instructions  to  disciples. — Lotus,  v.,  105  ; 
Gdtha,  pp.  53,  143,  165,  and  other  passages,  repeat 
the  injunction  of  self-denial,  meekness,  the  duty  of 
declining  presents,  often  nearly  in  the  words  of 
Matt,  vii.,  6.  Several  of  Buddha's  disciples  receive 
power  to  exorcise  evil  spirits. 

29.  At  the  death  of  Buddha,  the  earth  trembles, 
the  rocks  are  split,  phantoms  and  spirits  appear. 


136        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

(Koppen,  i.,  114  ;  Saint-Hilaire,  44 ;  Seydel,  281.) 
"  And,  behold,  the  earth  did  quake,  and  the  rocks 
were  rent,  .  .  .  and  the  graves  were  opened,  and 
many  bodies  of  the  saints  which  slept  arose." 
(Matt,  xxvii.,  51-53.) 

B.   DOGMATICAL   ANALOGIES. 

1.  Belief  in  the  necessity  of  redemption  by  a 
supernatural  mediator. 

2.  The  founder's  exaltation  to  the  rank  of  a 
God.  Buddha  is  equal  to  Brahm ;  demons  are 
powerless  against  his  word;  angels  and  Arhats 
minister  unto  him. 

3.  Belief  in  a  hell  of  fire  and  ceaseless  torments. 

4.  Belief  in  a  prodigious  number  of  malevolent 
demons. 

5.  Demerit  of  wealth.  "  It  is  difficult  to  be  rich 
and  keep  the  way." 

6.  Merit  of  mendicancy.  Monastic  brotherhoods 
resembling  the  order  of  St.  Francis. 

7.  The  moral  merit  of  celibacy.  Abstinence 
from  sexual  intercourse  a  constitutional  rule  of 
Buddhistic  convents  and  priest-schools. 

8.  Rejection  of  ancient  rites,  sacrifices,  etc. 

9.  Monastic  seclusion ;  merit  of  a  retired  life ; 
hermitages  and  convents. 

10.  Vanity  of  earthly  joys. 

11.  Depreciation  of  labor,  industry,  the  pursuit 
of  worldly  advantage  and  worldly  honors ;  mo- 
nastic vows  of  poverty  and  obedience. 

12.  The  sinfulness  of  skepticism. 

13.  Auricular  confession  of  sins. 

14.  Efficacy  of  vicarious  atonement. 


APPENDIX. 


137 


15.  Inculcation  of  patience,  submission,  and  self- 
denial;  neglect  of  the  active,  manly,  and  industrial 
virtues. 

16.  Love  of  enemies ;  submission  to  injustice  and 

tyranny. 

17.  Depreciation  of  worldly  affections ;  merit  of 
abandoning  wife  and  children. 

18.  Trinity  of  holiest  names,— Buddha,  Dharma, 
and  Sangha.  Dharma  is  the  "Word."  "And  the 
Word  was  with  God." 

19.  The  worship  of  saints. 

20.  Miracle-mongery.  The  chronicle  of  the 
Buddhistic  church  is  overloaded  with  the  records 
of  prodigies. 

21.  Metaphorical  Analogies.— Buddha  is  called 
the  "Light  of  the  World"  (Gatha,  p.  105).  Buddha's 
mercy  is  compared  to  a  rain  cloud  which  showers 
blessings  upon  the  just  and  unjust.  Earthly  joys 
are  compared  to  the  grass  which  blooms  to-day  and 
to-morrow  is  cast  into  the  fire  (Dhamm.,  334). 
True  believers  are  advised  to  gather  treasures 
which  neither  thieves  can  steal  nor  fire  or  water 
can  spoil  (Lotus,  130).  Ignorant  teachers  are  lik- 
ened to  the  blind  guiding  the  blind.  The  repent- 
ant sinner  is  described  in  a  parable  of  a  prodigal 
son,  who  wastes  his  substance  in  foreign  countries, 
but  at  last  returns  to  the  house  of  his  father,  and, 
after  serving  him  as  a  common  day-laborer,  is 
pardoned,  and  becomes  the  father's  chief  heir. 

C.    CEREMONIAL   ANALOGIES. 

Monasteries;  nunneries;  popery;  the  Thibetan 
Lama  is  worshipped  as   God's  vice-regent  upon 


138 


THE    SECRET    OF    THE    EAST. 


earth;  oecumenical  councils;  processions;  wor- 
ship of  relics;  strings  of  beads;  incense;  confes- 
sion of  sins ;  chaplets ;  service  with  double  choirs  ; 
pulpits ;  dalmaticas ;  a  censer  suspended  from  five 
chains;  litanies;  holy  water;  chalices;  shaven 
polls;  priests  going  bareheaded;  weekly  and  yearly 
fasts ;  exorcism ;  division  of  temples  into  a  nave 
and  lateral  halls;  aspersion  with  consecrated 
water;  bell-ringing;  candlemas;  feast  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception ;  masses  for  the  repose  of 
departed  souls. 

The  chief  proof  of  the  essential  identity  of  the 
two  creeds  is  the  anti-cosmic  principle,  the  nature- 
hating  and  earth-despising  tendency  which  dis- 
tinguishes Buddhism  and  Christianity  from  all 
other  religious  systems.  The  gospel  of  Buddha, 
though  a  pernicious,  is,  however,  a  perfectly  con- 
sistent doctrine.  According  to  the  ethics  of  Gau- 
tama,— "the  Awakened,"  as  his  followers  call  him 
in  distinction  from  benighted  mortals, — birth,  life, 
and  rebirth  is  an  eternal  round  of  sorrow  and  dis- 
appointment ;  the  present  and  the  future  are  but 
the  upper  and  lower  tire  of  an  ever-rolling  wheel 
of  woe;  existence  is  wholly  evil,  and  the  only 
salvation  from  the  misery  of  life  is  the  escape  to 
the  peace  of  Nirvana.  The  attempt  to  graft  this 
doctrine  upon  the  optimistic  theism  of  Palestine 
has  made  the  Christian  ethics  so  inconsistent  and 
contradictory.  A  paternal  Jehovah,  who  yet  eter- 
nally and  horribly  tortures  a  vast  plurality  of  his 
children.  An  earth,  the  perfect  work  of  a  benevo- 
lent God,  yet  all  a  vale  of  tears,  not  made  to  be 
enjoyed,  but  only  to  be  despised  and  renounced. 


APPENDIX. 


139 


An  omnipotent  heaven,  yet  unable  to  prevent  the 
intrigues  and  constant  victories  of  hell.  Chris- 
tianity is  evidently  not  a  homogeneous,  but  a  com- 
posite, a  hybrid  religion ;  and,  considered  in  con- 
nection with  the  indications  of  history  and  the 
evidence  of  the  above-named  ethical  and  traditional 
analogies,  these  facts  leave  no  reasonable  doubt 
that  the  founder  of  the  Galilean  Church  was  a  dis- 
ciple of  Buddha  Sakyamuni. 

Those  who  oppose  this  theory  should,  besides, 
remember  that  the  question  at  issue  is  not  between 
gospel  truth  and  borrowed  traditions,  but  between 
borrowed  traditions  and  deliberate  fiction;  for 
that  the  narrative  of  the  New  Testament  has  no 
historic  value  admits  of  mathematical  demonstra- 
tion. Not  only  does  it  abound  with  the  records  of 
prodigies  at  variance  with  the  normal  experience 
of  mankind  and  entirely  unsupported  by  the  testi- 
mony of  contemporary  historians,  but  also  with 
self-contradictions  which  remove  the  last  doubt 
that  the  chronicle  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  what- 
ever may  be  its  origin,  is  not  based  upon  facts. 

ill. 

Historical  Value  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  following  are  a  few  of  the  self-evident 
proofs  of  the  historical  (and,  a  fortiori,  canonical) 
value  of  the  book  which  Prof.  Christlieb  calls  "a 
canon  which  it  has  pleased  the  Lord  to  reveal  and 
which  the  Lord's  children  are  therefore  bound  to 
believe." 

In  the  first  chapter  of  Matthew,  the  Lord  reveals 
the  fact  that  from  the  birth  of  Christ  to  the  reign 


140        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

of  David  there  were  twenty-six  generations,  which 
are  enumerated  by  name.  In  the  Gospel  of  St. 
Luke,  it  has  pleased  the  Lord  to  reveal  a  genealogy 
of  forty-three  names,  of  which  only  the  first  and 
last  agree  with  that  of  the  former  list. 

Matthew  also  informs  us  that  Herod  ordered  the 
massacre  of  an  enormous  number  of  young  chil- 
dren, and  that  the  parents  of  Christ  saved  their 
infant  son  only  by  a  timely  flight  to  Egypt.  St. 
Luke  does  not  mention  the  massacre,  and  states 
that  the  parents  of  Christ,  instead  of  fleeing  to 
Egypt,  continued  to  dwell  in  their  native  city  of 
Nazareth.  (Luke  ii.,  22-39.)  Josephus,  who  re- 
lates every  trifling  circumstance  in  the  reign  of 
Herod,  especially  the  despotic  acts  of  the  viceroy, 
does  not  mention  the  murder  of  a  single  child. 
(Cf.  p.  130.  10.) 

St.  Matthew  states  that  the  name  of  Mary's 
father-in-law  was  Jacob.  (Matt,  i.,  16.)  Accord- 
ing to  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke,  Dr.  Christlieb  is 
bound  to  believe  that  the  gentleman's  name  was 
Heli.     (Luke  iii.,  23.) 

Mark  mentions  that  John  was  in  prison  when 
Jesus  came  into  Galilee.  John  informs  us  that  at 
that  time  John  was  not  yet  in  prison. 

Matthew  relates  that  the  centurion  came  in 
person  to  beseech  Christ  in  behalf  of  his  sick 
servant.  Luke  states  that  he  sent  the  elders  of 
the  Jews. 

According  to  Mark  (xv.,  25),  Jesus  was  crucified 
at  the  third  hour.  According  to  John  (xix.,  14, 
15),  the  preparation  for  the  crucifixion  only  began 
at  the  sixth  hour. 

St.    Matthew    (xxvii.,  5)    asserts    that    Judas 


APPENDIX.  141 

hanged  himself.     The  Acts  (i.,  18)  relate  that  he 
died  in  a  different  way. 

According  to  John,  only  one  woman  came  to  the 
sepulchre.  According  to  Matthew,  she  was  accom- 
panied by  a  namesake.  Their  statements  might  be 
reconciled,  but  Mark  informs  us  that  not  less  than 
three  women  came  together.  But,  even  that  must 
be  an  under  estimate,  for  Luke  assures  us  that 
there  were  more  than  four  women. 

Matthew  and  Mark's  women  saw  an  angel  at  the 
sepulchre :  Luke's  more  numerous  witnesses  oblige 
us  to  believe  that  they  saw  two  angels;  but  the 
dim  religious  light  of  the  tomb  may  have  confused 
their  vision,  for,  while  Matthew  informs  us  that  the 
apparition  was  seen  without  the  sepulchre,  John  and 
Mark  admit  that  it  was  seen  within.  Mark's  state- 
ment that  they  reached  the  sepulchre  at  the  time 
of  the  rising  sun  is  no  positive  counterproof,  for 
John  confesses  that  they  reached  it  while  it  was 
yet  dark.  Matthew's  angel  was  sitting  down. 
Luke's  angels  did  not  think  it  proper  to  keep  their 
seat  in  the  presence  of  so  many  ladies. 

Matthew  and  Luke  state  that  the  women  hastened 
to  carry  the  news  to  the  disciples.  Mark  (whose 
women  had  reached  the  sepulchre  after  daylight) 
admits  that  they  had  no  excuse  for  saying  any- 
thing to  anybody. 

If  we  shall  believe  Matthew,  Jesus  was  three 
days  and  three  nights  in  the  grave.  The  account 
of  Mark  implies  that  he  was  resurrected  during  the 
second  night. 

According  to  Luke,  the  ascension  of  Christ  took 
place  at  Bethany.     The  Acts  (i.,  9,  12)  state  that 


142        THE  SECRET  OF  THE  EAST. 

he  ascended  from  Mount  Olivet.     Both  accounts 
differ  from  that  of  Luke  (xvi.,  19). 

In  the  Gospel  of  St.  Matthew,  we  are  informed 
that  at  the  death  of  Christ  "there  was  darkness 
over  all  the  land  from  the  sixth  hour  unto  the 
ninth."  The  veil  of  the  temple  was  rent,  the 
earth  quaked,  the  rocks  split,  and  troops  of  corpses 
sallied  from  their  tombs  and  availed  themselves  of 
the  opportunity  to  visit  their  metropolitan  friends. 
St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke  do  not  think  it  worth 
while  to  report  such  trifles.  St.  John,  an  eye- 
witness of  the  crucifixion,  does  not  allude  to  them. 
Josephus,  in  his  detailed  history  of  the  same  time 
and  the  same  country,  never  mentions  them.  The 
Roman  historians,  whose  countrymen  ruled  all 
Syria  and  Asia  Minor,  mention  nothing  of  the 
kind.  Can  we  doubt  that  the  rumbling  of  Mat- 
thew's earthquake  was  the  echo  of  that  East  Indian 
tradition  which  the  writers  of  the  New  Testament 
mistook  for  the  revelation  of  the  Lord?  When 
Buddha,  the  saviour,  died  at  Kusinagra,  the  earth 
quaked  and  the  rocks  were  rent,  phantoms  as- 
cended from  their  caves,  and  the  nine  heavens 
were  darkened,  as  well  as  the  earth. 


THE  IMAGE    BREAKER, 

BY  JOHN  E.  REMSBURG. 


No.  1.  The  Decline  of  Faith.  No.  4.  Jeffekson  an   Unbeliever. 

44    2.  Protestant  Intolerance.  "    5.  Paine  and  Wesley. 

"    3.  Washington  an  Unbeliever.      "    6.  The  Christian  Sabbath. 


TESTIMONIALS 


Brief,  cheap,  incisive,  unanswerable.—  James  Parion. 

The  language  is  dignified  and  the  logic  sound.— The  Alliance. 

Sharp  enough  to  penetrate  through  the  thickest  crust  of  superstition.— 
Hon.  Elizur  Wright,  Boston.  , 

They  will  he  useful  in  clearing  the  way  for  the  better  order  of  things  to 
come.— T.  B.  Wakeman,  New  York. 

The  author  writes  in  vigorous  style.— The  Index. 

The  "Image  Breaker"  promises  to  do  most  effective  work.— Allan 
Pringle,  Canada.  . 

They  are  good  seed,  and  humanity  will  reap  from  them  a  priceless  har 
vest.— Col.  John  R.  Kelso,  California. 

His  style  is  very  simple,  earnest,  and  attractive.  He  don't  overshoot 
nor  underfire,  but  hits  the  central  object  at  a  vital  point.— Hon.  W.  H. 
Herndoa,  Law  Partner  and  Biographer  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  _    _ 

I  wish  we  were  wealthy  enough  to  put  one  into  every  Christian's  post- 
office  box  in  the  world.— Ella  E.  Gibson,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Each  number  contains  a  brilliant  lecture  on  some  popular  subject.— 
The  Universe,  San  Francisco. 

I  like  his  style  much  better  than  IngersoWs.— Jeremiah  Hacker,  N.  J. 

An  edition  of  fifteen  thousand  *•  Image  Breakers  "  in  India  has  already 
been  exhausted.—  A  tchison  Globe. 

They  should  have  a  wide  circulation.—  Judge  Arnold  Krekel,  Missouri. 

His  hammer  is  small,  but  it  strikes  effective  blows.—  Judge  C.  B.  Waite, 

He  hammers  out  one  point  at  a  time  and  finishes  it.—  Hon.  A.  B.  Brad- 
ford, Pennsylvania.  ....  n    .      .  •   -   t  • 

Like  everything  he  writes  and  says,  proof  is  given  to  substantiate  his 
claims.—  Kansas  Blade.  . 

Perfect  gems  of  Liberal  thought.—./.  H.  Bnrnham,  Michigan. 

The  best  ammunition  for  missionary  work.— The,  Iron-Clad  Age. 

Each  one  will  be  found  to  be  an  "Image  Breaker"  or  destroyer  ol 
theology.— Boston  Investigator.  . 

Being  read  at  a  meeting  of  our  National  Secular  Society  the  members 
expressed  themselves  in  high  terms  of  the  works.— J.  E.  Brumages,  Ports- 
mouth, England.  ,         _      .    .  ,.  .... 

The  subjects  treated  are  popular.    The  information  they  contain  is  im- 

Sarted  in  language  plain  and  forcible,  and  not  seldom  with  grace  and 
eauty  of  expression.— Thomas  C.  Gray,  Edinburgh,  Scotland. 
Very  creditable,  and  will  bear  good  f  nut.— Joseph  Byrne,  Dublin,\lreland 
Thoroughly  logical,  clear  and  vigorous.  His  style  is  particularly  bright 
and  lucid  Humanity  cannot  know  the  extent  of  the  services  rendered  to 
it  by  men  like  him.— Edward  OW'eil,  Secretary  Irish  Secular  Society. 

They  are  full  of  terse,  trenchant,  radical  matter,  and  will  open  the«eyes 
of    every  reasonable    man.—  Kedarnath   Basu,  M.C.A.S.,    Berhampore, 

Helping  to  spread  the  principles  of  Freetb ought  and  check  the  baneful 
influence  of  Christian  teachings.— Indian  Mirror.  .......       ., 

JohnE.  Remsburg's  "Decline  of  Faith"  has  exposed  in  their  face  the 
false  assertions  of  the  Christian  missionaries  — .V.  Mukerji,  India. 

Just  the  works  to  suit  the  Freethinkers  of  Ceylon.  I  wish  their  author 
would  take  a  trip  to  this  portion  of  the  world.—  E.  R.  Gooneratua, 
Mudaliyar  of  the  Governor's  Gate,  Galle,  Ceylon,  India 

They  are  valuable  contributions  to  the  literature  of  freedom.— Charles 
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Avoid,  Inspired  Slavery,  Inspired  Marriage,  Inspired  War, 
Inspired  Keligious  Liberty,  Conclusion.  Paper,  50  cents; 
cloth,  $1.25. 

The  Christian  Religion.     By  E.  G.  Ingersoll,  Judge 

Jeremiah  S.  Black,  and  Prof.  George  P.  Fisher.  1  his  is  a 
series  of  articles  which  appeared  in  the  North  American  Review, 
and  excited  great  interest  from  the  high  position  of  the  au- 
thors. Judge  Black  refused  to  answer  Mr.  Ingersoll's  second 
paper  and  the  services  of  Mr.  Fisher  were  obtained.  Paper, 
50  cents  ;  cloth,  $1.00. 
Interviews  on  Talmage.     Being  Six  Interviews  with 

the  Famous  Orator  on  Six  Sermons  by  the  Rev.  T.  DeWitt 
Talmage,  of  Brooklyn,  to  which  is  added  "A  Talmagian  Cate- 
chism." Stenographically  reported  by  I.  Newton  Baker. 
Printed  in  bold,  clear  type,  on  heavy,  tinted  paper,  and  hand- 
somely bound  in  muslin,  with  heavy  boards,  beveled  edges, 
gilt  top.  Octavo,  443  pages,  $2.00.  Paper,  50  cts;  plain  cloth, 
$1.25. 

What  Must  We  Do  to  he  Saved?    In  this  pamphlet 

Mr  Ingersoll  analvzes  the  so-called  gospels  of  Matthew. 
Mark,  Luke,  and  John,  and  devotes  a  chapter  each  to  the 
Catholics,  the  Episcopalians,  the  Methodists,  the  Presbyte- 
rians, the  Evangelical  Alliance,  and  answers  the  question  of 
the  Christians  as  to  what  he  proposes  instead  of  Christianity, 
the  religion  of  sword  and  flame.     Paper,  25  cents. 


WORKS   BY  J.  E.  REMSBURG. 

False  Claims.  Eevised  and  Enlarged.  As  a  Missionary 
Document  it  is  unexcelled.  Among  the  subjects  considered 
by  Mr.  Remsburg  are :  The  Church  and  Morality ;  Criminal 
Statistics,  showing  the  creeds  of  the  prisoners  in  the  peniten- 
tiaries; the  Church  and  Civilization;  the  Church  and  Sci- 
ence; the  Church  and  Learning;  the  Church  and  Liberty; 
the  Church  and  the  Antislavery  Reform;  the  Woman's 
Rights  Movement ;  the  Temperance  Reform ;  the  Church  and 
the  Republic.     Price,  10  cents  singly;  75  cents  per  dozen. 

Bible  Morals.  Twenty  Crimes  and  Vices  Sanctioned  by 
Scripture:  Falsehood  and  Deception;  Cheating;  Theft  and 
Robbery ;  Adultery  and  Prostitution ;  Murder ;  Wars  of  Con- 
quest and  Extermination ;  Despotism ;  Intolerance  and  Per- 
secution; Injustice  to  Woman;  Unkindness  to  Children; 
Cruelty  to  Animals ;  Human  Sacrifices;  Cannibalism ;  Witch- 
craft ;  Slavery ;  Polygamy ;  Intemperance ;  Poverty  and  Va- 
grancy ;  Ignorance  and  Idiocy ;  Obscenity.  Price,  single 
copies,  25  cents ;  6  copies,  $1.  Special  discount  on  largei 
quantities. 

Sabbath-Breaking.  This  is  the  best  and  most  thorough 
work  ever  written  on  the  Sabbath  from  a  rational  point  of 
view.  Large  and  handsome  print.  The  question  is  dis- 
cussed under  the  following  heads :  Origin  of  the  Sabbatic 
Idea;  the  Jewish  Sabbath;  the  Christian  Scriptures  and  the 
Sabbath;  Examination  of  Sunday  Arguments;  Origin  of 
Christian  Sabbath;  Testimony  of  the  Christian  Fathers;  the 
Sabbath  during  the  Middle  Ages;  the  Puritan  Sabbath; 
Testimony  of  Christian  Reformers,  Scholars,  and  Divines; 
Abrogation  of  Sunday  Laws.     Price,  25  cents ;  six  copies,  $1. 

Image  Breaker.  Six  Lectures:  Decline  of  Faith, 
Protestant  Intolerance,  Washington  an  Unbeliever;  Jefferson 
an  Unbeliever ;  Paine  and  Wesley ;  Christian  Sabbath. 
Each  5  cents ;  bound,  paper,  25  cents;  per  doz.  40 cents. 

Thomas  Paine.  Tells  the  story  of  the  Author-Hero's 
life,  delineates  the  leading  traits  of  his  character  and  genius, 
and  vindicates  his  name  from  the  aspersions  cast  upon  it. 
Choice  extracts  from  "  Common  Sense,"  "  American  Crisis," 
"Rights  of  Man,"  and  "Age  of  Reason,"  are  given;  also, 
tributes  to  Paine's  character  from  more  than  one  hundred 
noted  persons  of  Europe  and  America,  many  of  them  written 
expressly  for  this  work.  Second  edition,  160  pages,  printed 
on  fine  tinted  paper,  neatly  bound,  and  containing  a  hand- 
some steel  portrait  of  Paine.     Paper,  50  cts ;  cloth,  75  cts. 

The   Apostle  Of  Liberty.      An   address    delivered  in 
Paine  Hall,  before  the  N.  E.  Freethinkers'  Convention,  Jan- 
uary 29,  1884.     Price,  10  cents. 
For  all  the  above  works  address  THE  TRUTH  SEEKER  CO., 
28  Lafayette  Place,  New  York, 


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